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BERNARD SHAW 



The Man and The Mask 



BY 



RICHARD BURTON 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1916 

1.0 [oy^ 






Copyright, 1016, 

BT 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANT 
Published November, 1916 



f/0 



NOV "IB 1916 



THE QUINN 4 BODEN CO. PRESS 

RAHWAV, N. J. 



CLA445648 



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PREFACE 

The following pages attempt to give within 
limits somewhat sharply drawn a definite idea of 
the personality, the work, and the meaning of a 
dramatist of our day who has gained distinction, 
invited abuse, and secured in excess the dubious 
compliment of misrepresentation. So far as the 
book can claim to be a contribution to the subject, 
it may base it on the succinctness of the presenta- 
tion; the analyses of the plays in chronologic 
sequence, technic as well as teaching and literary 
quality in mind; and upon the chapters in which 
respectively Shaw's craft as an artist of the thea- 
tre and his intellectual significance as publicist 
and philosopher are studied. 

No one can write a book on Bernard Shaw with- 
out acknowledging the inevitable obligation to Dr. 
Archibald Henderson, the authoritative biographer 
of the playwright, and the man best fitted to de- 
cide any question pertaining to him. The present 
writer renders grateful thanks to Dr. Henderson 
for his quick and generous giving of information 
not otherwise to be secured : a debt as pleasant as 
it is imperative to pay in this preface. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEB 




FAGK 


I. 


A Preliminary View .... 


1 


II. 


The Man 


15 


III. 


The Evidence of the Plays 


34 




" Widowers' Houses "... 


39 




" The Philanderer " . 


45 




^* Mrs. Warren's Profession" . 


49 




" Arms and the Man "... 


58 


IV. 


The Evidence of the Plays, Con- 






tinued: 


66 




vj "Candida" 


66 




" How He Lied to Her Husband " . 


74 




" You Never Can Tell "... 


76 




" The Man of Destiny " . 


82 




il^The Devil's Disciple" . 


89 




'•^■" Caesar and Cleopatra " . 


95 




" Captain Brassbound's Conversion " 


100 




" The Admirable Bashville " . 


106 


V. 


The Evidence of the Plays, Con- 






tinued: 


108 




" Man and Superman "... 


108 




"John Bull's Other Island" . 


114 



vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTBB PAOB 

"Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction" 119 



" Major Barbara "... 
" The Doctor's Dilemma " 
" The Interlude at The Playhouse ' 
" Getting Married " . 

VI. The Evidence of the Plays, Con 

eluded: 

" The Showing-up of Blanco Pos 

net " 

"Press Cuttings" . 
" Misalliance " . .^ . 
" The Dark Lady of the Sonnets " 
^*^ Fanny's First Play " . 
/i Androcles and the Lion " 
" Overruled " . . . . 
" Pygmalion " . . . . 
"Great Catherine" . 
" The Music Cure " . 

VII. The Social Thinker ... 
VIII. The Poet and Mystic 
IX. The Theatre Craftsman . 
X. Shaw's Place in Modern Drama 
Bibliography .... 



120 
129 
139 
140 

147 

147 
153 
157 
160 
162 
167 
173 
176 
183 
185 

189 
211 
238 
271 
295 



Index 297 



BERNARD SHAW 

THE MAN AND THE MASK 



BERNARD SHAW 

CHAPTER I 

A PRELIMINARY VIEW 

It might be said that to declare Shaw a man 
behind a mask is only a way of calling him a hu- 
man being. We are all masks, as the very ety- 
mology of person implies. Behind our words 
and deeds and personalities hides the real ego 
known only to itself and its maker; indeed, 
lucky if in an occasional crisis it be known to 
itself. George Eliot says somewhere that we 
are always either overestimating or underesti- 
mating our fellows; it is only God who sees us as 
we are. The gnomic saying of the Greeks, 
" Know thyself," takes a deeper meaning as its 
full modern implications are realized. 

Nevertheless, the title of this book is justified 
in that Shaw has seen fit to adopt a method and 
has fostered a popular idea of him which ob- 



S BERNARD SHAW 

scure his true personality and the meaning of 
his work. He has, by his own confession, put on 
the garb of the mountebank and attracted wide 
public attention thereby; his purpose in so do- 
ing is not self-advertisement, though the reverse 
is often assumed; but rather, the more general 
hearing thus secured for his views. 

As a result, and quite naturally, he is among 
the best known and least known of men. His 
vogue as a dramatist is very great, he is both 
notorious and famous in this phase of his activ- 
ity; yet little understood, even yet, in the true 
sense. Shaw first suffered from the darkness of 
obscurity; now he suffers from that excess of 
light offered by newspapers: which is darkness 
visible. Of old, misunderstood and neglected, it 
is his paradoxical fate, — with a certain fitness 
for the dealer in paradox, — when lauded and run 
after, to be still misunderstood. If the mounte- 
bank hides the man, he himself must divide the 
blame with the public; since it is by his own 
preference that he has put an antic disposition 
on. 

The present volume essays to find, and to 
delineate within moderate limits, the man behind 



A PRELIMINARY VIEW S 

the mask; and showing him in his work, to ex- 
hibit the true lineaments of a forceful and seri- 
ous satiric thinker whose skill in dramaturgy 
places him with the ablest playwrights of his 
time. It seeks to avoid alike the shallow misap- 
preciations of the more common estimate arid the 
super-laudation of Shaw idolaters. It is based 
upon hearty, but, I trust, clear-eyed admiration, 
and expresses the belief that, rightly seen, Ber- 
nard Shaw is a fine artist of the theatre and a 
worthy leader in the twentieth century eclaire- 
cissement of the English-speaking people. 

The contrast between Shaw today and Shaw 
when he began to write plays is in itself a drama. 
During the theatre season of 1914-5, no less than 
seven of his plays were shown in New York City 
alone. In Germany and France, in Russia and 
Scandinavia, no dramatic author of English 
speech, save possibly Shakspere, equals him in 
popularity. A Frenchman, M. Hamon, has writ- 
ten a critical book, the sub-title of which, " The 
Moliere of the Twentieth Century," is its own 
comment. Here is a man in danger of being 
what is called a classic before he dies: still 
another paradox. And for nine years during 



4 BERNARD SHAW 

his novitiate in London, his earnings by his pen 
amounted to six pounds. 

Nevertheless, as I have implied, not only with 
the general public, who get their caricature of 
any person of public import through gossip, 
printed or spoken, by hearsay and haphazard; 
but also with numerous intelligent playgoers 
and play-readers, he is still little more than an 
amusing, irresponsible fellow, a phrase maker 
and iconoclast of conventions, whose forte is the 
detached jibe, the conscienceless though scintil- 
lant epigram, whose sole purpose is to shock and 
overturn. These impute a kind of merit to him 
in that he has popularized the thesis drama; but 
stop there. To not a few who go a little further 
in acceptance, he remains an intellectual cock- 
tail, not so much mental food as a stimulant of 
questionable peptonic worth. 

All such fail to see that while the shock in 
Shaw is doubtless there, there is a hope behind 
it: the hope to shock an inert mass into thinking 
about sundry vital latter-day social matters ; a 
galvanic process brought about by the driving 
power of a wit backed by an alert, serious 
mind. 



A PRELIMINARY VIEW 5 

It were foolish to deny that the huportance of 
Shaw's subject-matter as well as his seriousness 
of intention are easily lost sight of in his some- 
what startling manner of presentation. He is 
his own worst enemy in this respect. Not only 
has he adopted the methods of the showman — 
" the cart and the trumpet for me," he cries — 
but it would 'appear at times that he takes a wil- 
ful pleasure in puzzling journeyman brains. He 
would agree with Carlyle as to the proportion of 
fools in the British Isles (subtracting the Celts), 
but would raise the percentage. And he has the 
mischievous habit — there is a touch of the enfant 
terrible in this complex personality — of stating 
his thought in terms of whimsical exaggeration. 
We must simply accept this as a part of the 
technic of his dialectics, and make the expected 
allowance. The literalist has a hard time with 
Bernard Shaw, while the latter looks on with a 
malicious grin, though the most amiable of 
men. 

Moreover, of all writers and thinkers, he is the 
most dangerous to listen to in garbled form or 
to trust in sentences disrupted from their setting. 
And as the newspapers exist, among other 



6 BERNARD SHAW 

worthier objects, for the purpose of headlining 
human utterances, and this is another name for 
distortion, he suffers peculiarly. 

To illustrate: in his parliamentary report on 
the censorship of plays, he says : " I am not an 
ordinary playwright in general practice. I am 
a specialist in immoral and heretical plays." 
Those who read to run away, want no more than 
this. Shaw stands self-condemned before them. 
But if this sufficiently challenging remark be 
taken in its connection, and the whole screed 
read (which perhaps two or three will do of the 
hundred who will hear or read the plays), it will 
be evident that Shaw means that he writes plays 
that run counter to what he deems the pseudo- 
morality of our day ; " immoral " turns out to 
be " moral," in his Shavian sense. Had he said 
this in the usual unpiquant way, he had not been 
Bernard Shaw, nor have arrested the jaded at- 
tention. Thus, his brilliancy as a writer gets in 
the way of his thought, and we blame his man- 
ner rather than our haste or unwillingness to 
read him to the end. 

A free use of sweeping generalizations, vio- 
lently juxtaposed contradictions, and a very de- 



A PRELIMINARY VIEW 7 

bauch of superlatives further complicate mat- 
ters. He makes his points effective, sets them 
forth in a high light, in this fashion. One might 
be tempted to call it a linguistic, not a mental 
habit, were it not for the obvious fact that it is 
all temperamental, too; Shaw's cool, reflective, 
analytic type of mind when once it gets tangled 
with words in the expression of thought, acquires 
a heat which is the result of a characteristic 
state of his emotions. He feels keenly, and his 
feelings, when he is warmed to his topic, color all 
his conclusions. Striving to be objective, he 
really becomes a superb example of impression- 
ism, and is all the more effective as a pleader be- 
cause of it. The word pleader, or advocate, is 
apt; Shaw is a great pleader, often a special 
pleader, as were Carlyle and Ruskin, and his 
eloquence, like theirs, will last even if in due time 
his views, like theirs, are discredited. The im- 
pact of his feeling has behind it a tremendously 
impelling moral force. The blend of these two 
qualities, expressional gift and moral suasion, 
makes him the reformer he is. 

With the eccentricities of thought and expres- 
sion conceded, it is much the easiest way to caU 



8 BERNARD SHAW 

Shaw a crack-brained enthusiast or a smart 
notoriety hunter, (as one might describe a Ger- 
trude Stein), and so dismiss him. This is very 
much what the many do. Cryptic sayings and 
intellectual somersaults are not for the lovers 
of the trite and the obvious. These may be re- 
minded that writers exist — to mention names 
were invidious — who supply their needs. Why 
lug in Shaw.? — to paraphrase Whistler. 

It is a pity to confuse the sound estimate of 
such a man in his representative work with 
merely temporary prejudices. Just now, Shaw 
is persona non grata because of his diatribe on 
the war. Whether this deliverance be wise or 
foolish, it is a query which does not affect his 
place as a writer of drama by one jot or tittle. 
Such questions loom large for the moment, but in 
the end are seen to be foolishly ephemeral. Only 
the things of the mind remain in the long run; 
they will be present and important after war and 
the rumors of war have died away. One heard, a 
few months ago, that, owing to public feeling, 
and in high dudgeon on account of it, Shaw had 
declared he would write no more plays. Yet, re- 
cently, his latest drama, to wit, " O'Flaherty, 



A PRELIMINARY VIEW 9 

V. C.j" is announced in Dublin. One may, if one so 
wishes, assume with Mr. Wells that the playwright 
is demolished; or one may receive from the pious 
hands of Mr. John Palmer the epitaph of the 
once popular maker of intellectual drama. It 
were the part of saner criticism to reflect that 
these little flurries never affect the lasting repu- 
tation of authors who really matter, which this 
one indubitably does. Even when questions of 
character and conduct are involved — which, so 
far as morality is concerned, is not the case here, 
— nothing is surer than that in the end every 
writer is judged by his best work and by nothing 
else. The regrettable acts of our Byrons, Vil- 
lous, Poes, Verlaines, Rousseaus, and Wildes do 
not alter by a hair's breadth the final favorable 
verdict upon their writings. The tranquil desic- 
cation of dust takes care of all that. Shaw's 
attitude toward the war is not a popular one; 
it took courage to state his opinion, a quality he 
has never lacked. His view may be foolish, 
hasty, ill-judged, in bad taste; that it is un- 
patriotic is debatable, and depends upon your 
definition of patriotism. But, aside from all this, 
the main point is that Shaw is still the author of 



10 BERNARD SHAW 

" Candida," " Man and Superman," " Mrs. War- 
ren's Profession," and sundry other plays — with 
their Prefaces; and the value whereof is just 
what it was before the war and will remain of 
exactly the same importance when, war being 
over, the people settle down to the long agony of 
paying the bills and mourning their dead. The 
war, as part of its general myopic mist, has had 
a tendency to obscure straight seeing and 
straight judging. Shaw will survive it, like the 
rest of us, (unless we are killed), and although 
apparently damaged, will eventually suffer less 
than most of the participants. 

The mind simply balks at the picture of Ber- 
nard Shaw quitting before he is sixty, because of 
public execration begotten of his exercise of com- 
mon sense (as he calls it) concerning the present 
struggle. 

To peruse patiently, assimilatively, so volumi- 
nous a writer of fiction, essay and drama, by 
which process alone the earnest social thinker 
and fine craftsman of the theatre can be found, 
is more than a May-day pastime. Yet by no 
other road can the true Bernard Shaw be met. 
He has deliberately chosen the theatre as the 



A PRELIMINARY VIEW 11 

best mode through which to get a hearing, be- 
lieving it to be " the most seductive form of the 
fine arts " ; and hence the best medium for 
propaganda. Accept this serious aim, concede a 
method that is the only one possible for his per- 
sonality, assume that he not only talks brilliantly 
but has something worth while to say, and the 
good that is in him will become ours. The as- 
sumption of seriousness is the fundamental pre- 
requisite to an understanding. Above all, must 
the silly and peculiarly Anglo-Saxon mistake be 
avoided of supposing that a wit-thinker is a con- 
tradiction in terms, that fun and philosophy 
cannot keep house together. The French have 
Rabelais and know better, the Germans have 
Heine and Richter ; perhaps some day the Ameri- 
cans will recall Mark Twain, the British, Shaw, 
and both nations have learned the lesson. At 
present, to be deep and not dull, weighty and not 
heavy, is to be a mental suspect. 

In the critical treatment of Shaw up to the 
present time, emphasis has been laid, upon the 
whole, too much upon Shaw the thinker, at the 
expense of Shaw the artist. Important as an 
intellectual arouser he certainly is, but equally 



12 BERNARD SHAW 

true is it that he is a fine artist of the theatre 
and the tendency to minimize or deny his 
skill and overlook his significance in the modern 
development of the playhouse on its technical 
side is to be deplored. Too often in dealing with 
Shaw, has it been assumed that he has won his 
way to a foremost position in the contemporary 
theatre through sheer power of thought and 
originality of manner, breaking the rules and suc- 
ceeding in spite of a lack of craftsmanship, as 
Brieux in France has done with late dramas like 
" Maternity " and " Damaged Goods." Nothing 
is further from the truth. Shaw has not been 
careless or unaware of his metier. He has broad- 
ened the rules, as the creative artist seeking a 
freer self-expression always must, and the study 
of his methods, if accompanied with some ac- 
quaintance with^ramatic technic in general, will 
convince the student of this fact. 

In chapters three to six, in which I have ex- 
amined all the Shaw pieces in chronologic order, 
attention has been directed in each case to 
the way in which results have been obtained by 
the extension of sound dramaturgic principles as 
applied to a new purpose, and a consequent un- 



A PRELIMINARY VIEW 13 

usualness which to the superficial scrutiny may 
appear to mean an inexpert hand. I believe it is 
within the bounds of modesty to claim that the 
technical elements of this writer's work have not 
hitherto been so definitely pointed out. The view 
thus presented should be for this reason a more 
balanced, rounded one. This attention to the 
technic of the individual plays is further ampli- 
fied in chapter nine, wherein, synthetically, the 
work is studied in its technical aspects. In 
the chapters which sum up the main aspects of the 
dramatist's work, specific points made in the 
analysis of the jAsljs are again used, intention- 
ally. I make no apology for this, believing it to 
be helpful. 

A writer is to be found in his work and esti- 
mated by his work. But a knowledge of a man's 
personality in his deeds and days, in his relation 
to family, city, and state, helps to interpret him 
when we seek to understand his meaning as an 
author. Particularly is this true of Bernard 
Shaw, who has proved so baffling to many as play 
writer and social thinker. Therefore, it is worth 
while to look at the man and citizen before we 
take up the dramatic works which reflect — or, as 



14 BERNARD SHAW 

some would say, distort, — ^his position toward 
life and human society. 

But this thought may well be retained as a 
background to any personal consideration of 
Shaw's thought; a consideration that desires to 
pass over and beyond the personal as far as is 
possible, and see the truth about him objectively, 
and as it is. It may be that the loss of per- 
spective denied to a critic who tries to see a con- 
temporary for his real significance, is in a meas- 
ure made up for by that warmth of contact which 
is not always to be regarded as a misleading de- 
flection. Any judgment which lacks the ruddy 
verdict of the heart is as much astray as that 
which allows itself to be swept away by that emo- 
tion. A certain value in Shaw can already be 
seen, although his ultimate place must be later 
decided. He has stimulated men broadly into 
the earnest consideration of important social 
questions. He is a wise physician who performs 
upon the body of our time the surgical operation 
of making us think; and who, by the use of 
the anesthesia of art, has made the process 
pleasurable. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MAN 

The salient facts of Shaw's personal career 
with its background of ancestry, family, early 
environment, education, and subsequent develop- 
ment are so well known that one can be succinct. 
Refraining from too great particularity, I shall 
give main stress to certain significant happen- 
ings for their value in throwing light upon his 
character and views. Doctor Henderson, Mr. 
McCabe, and other biographers have spread out 
the general story for our scrutiny. 

George Bernard Shaw, or Bernard Shaw as 
the world has come to call him, is a man of sixty 
years, in the full prime of his intellectual powers, 
although likely to grow in mental stature during 
the coming decade. His family can be described 
as belonging to the upper middle class of Prot- 
estant Irish, small gentry whose orientation 
about a baronet of distant kin has furnished 
satiric references for the member of the family 
whose democracy has always been of a sort to 

15 



16 BERNARD SHAW 

get the irony in such spectacles. The family tree 
shows that to call the Shaws Celts is to use the 
word in the usual loose way, since they are of an 
English and Scotch strain which settled in Ire- 
land in the seventeenth century; as Mr. McCabe 
puts it, " they were Orange aliens in Catholic 
Ireland." Celt is a generic name to include the 
Irish, Scotch, and Welsh, and in this sense the 
Shaws were dominantly Celtic. Irish they were 
not in the deepest, fullest significance of the 
word. Of his father, first a small government of- 
ficial, then an unsuccessful corn merchant, we 
get an uncomplimentary picture from the son; 
the former seems to have been an example of a 
somewhat ineffective, rather helpless specimen of 
the lesser gentry. It is from the mother that 
Shaw derives, sa far as he is to be explained by 
his immediate parentage. She was evidently a 
woman of parts and strong character ; a fine musi- 
cian from whom he got his knowledge of and taste 
in that art; and modern in the way in which, 
when the family fortunes were at ebb tide, she 
was able to go out into the world and by her tal- 
ents and will-power support those dependent 
upon her; as well as later, tide over her gifted 



THE MAN 17 

son in his harsh struggle in London to get on 
his feet as a writer and thinker. Shaw would ap- 
parently have foundered during those Grub 
Street days had it not been for this maternal 
backing; and he has handsomely made acknowl- 
edgment of the fact in print. He reports that 
as a lad he was not supposed to play with the 
children of tradespeople; which sheds light upon 
his family, and was regarded by the embryo 
rebel and democrat as an education in snobbery. 
We get a picture of him as an imaginative, prob- 
ing, restless fellow, who disdained dreary chapel 
going, and found his consolation in the compan- 
ionship of his mother with her music. School 
found him sceptic and left him contemptuous. 
With characteristic energy he said of it : " It was 
the most completely wasted and mischievous 
part of my life." But he read books worth 
while in an eclectic fashion ; at fifteen his educa- 
tion in the formal sense ceased. But music at 
home, the National Gallery in Dublin, and his 
private commerce with literature did much to 
develop his taste and powers. It is interesting to 
know that letters at this time attracted him less 
than painting and music. 



18 BERNARD SHAW 

Next, we see him in the office of a land agent; 
or rather, he is there, but hard to see, for Shaw 
as a business man — or boj — arouses incredulity. 
Yet, to make the smile ironic, he showed excel- 
lent capacity in such work, then and always, and 
those who deal with him today are aware of it. 
He is that unusual combination, a literary man 
of genius and shrewd man-of-affairs, with a 
practical gift for the details of committee meet- 
ings and public social work. Here is one of his 
many contradictions. When Mrs. Shaw removed 
to London to prosecute her career in music, 
Bernard and his father lived in Dublin lodgings 
for several years. It seems to have been an irk- 
some period for the son, who, as solace, was read- 
ing the scientists and formulating his political, 
social, and philosophic views; a witness to this 
was his letter in Public Opinion in which his dis- 
gust at the methods of the American evangelists. 
Moody and Sankey, was expressed with such 
characteristic vigor as to lay him open to the 
charge of atheist. At the age of twenty, feeling 
that self-preservation demanded a wider horizon, 
he went to London himself (1876), and for nine 
years followed letters on a little oatmeal; with 



THE MAN 19^ 

results sardonically described by the would-be 
author, who states that the entire takings of his 
pen were six pounds, and five of them for a medi- 
cal advertisement ! He was a very shabby genteel 
figure during these years; which nevertheless 
meant fruitful growth, enlarging experience. He 
appeared now and then in minor publications and 
produced his first piece of fiction, concerning 
which Shaw remarks that the edition, having no 
sale, had been stored away and partially ealen by 
mice ; " but even they have been unable to finish 
it." 

He was in the way of meeting persons of in- 
tellectual and esthetic tastes and accomplish- 
ments ; he lectured briefly for the Edison Tele- 
phone Company, assimiliated Spencer, Darwin, 
and Huxley, joined the Zeletical Society, an or- 
ganization whose chief business in the eighteen- 
eighties was to attack the Christian doctrines ; 
frequented all sorts of radical hole-and-corner 
meetings, where his own sort naturally foregath- 
ered; and was always by report a shabby, 
piquant, arresting figure, eagerly earnest to dis- 
cuss the universe, and gradually training himself 
by these practices to be one of the most effective 



20 BERNARD SHAW 

platform men of his day in England. One gets 
a clear vision of G. B. S. in these days, harangu- 
ing a Sunday morning mob from the tail end of 
a cart in Hyde Park. He heard Henry George 
lecture one night, and the American gave him a 
definite impulse towards social problems in con- 
trast with the theoretic and intellectual prob- 
lems which philosophical socialism is wont to 
thresh out. Shaw declares that George was a 
turning point in his career; though the single 
tax panacea did not entirely satisfy him later. 
He allied himself with the Land Reform Union 
and became acquainted with thinkers like Edward 
Carpenter, Henry Salt, Sidney Olivier, Sidney 
Webb, and J. L. Joyne ; also he settled into those 
ascetic habits of life which today offer us the 
spectacle of one whose own writings are taken to 
plead for seemingly lawless irregularities, leading 
a life of well-nigh monastic regimen and absten- 
tion. Vegetarianism was adopted and has been 
consistently followed ; a habit " the ravages of 
which his robust constitution," says McCabe, 
" has admirably resisted for years," a somewhat 
naive remark, hardly doing justice to the proba- 
bility that this dietary predilection, along with an 



THE MAN 21 

avoidance of tobacco and all liquors, plays an 
appreciable part in the peculiar powers of Shaw. 
To say that the writer whose course of life is of 
this character is exactly the one to handle sex 
matters with the Biblical directness and boldness 
familiar to us in Shaw, is doubtless to expose 
oneself to ridicule ; nevertheless, I believe the sug- 
gestion has much to support it. If Shaw is the 
plainest spoken of dramatists and the frankest 
in choice of themes, he is at the same time the 
purest minded. And to deny that this bears no 
relation to his unusual purity of life (using the 
word purity in no silly, restricted sense) seems to 
me absurd. 

It is both difficult and unnecessar}^ to bring 
the Shaw of these earlier days under the re- 
straint of a category or school. He was an 
independent and eclectic thinker, particularly in- 
terested by nature in social theories of reform. 
An essentially sympathetic nature at bottom, de- 
spite all contrary appearances, he had an hon- 
esty and openness of mind which led him to object 
as much to the stern application of the doctrine 
of the survival of the fittest as to the convention- 
alities and prettinesses of the Christian society 



22 BERNARD SHAW 

which surrounded him. To be en rapport with 
the scientific notions of his day, as a modern 
realistic thinker, he must have accepted in its full 
implications the evolutionary doctrine. But the 
ethical bias and the odd idealism in him worked 
together to modify or oppose this view, as will 
be further seen later in this study, when we come 
to consider his religious and philosophic position. 
His special involvement in socialism was but 
the natural flowering out of his general rebellious 
attitude towards privilege, capital, and things- 
as-they-are. He passed from George to the Ger- 
man Marx, with his theory of rent, took part in 
the debates of the Social Democratic Federation, 
and for a time Marx's theory of surplus value took 
the place with him before occupied by George's 
single tax as an open sesame of reform. He 
sloughed off earlier views as he lived and thought, 
with the courage of the strong man aware that 
consistency, in the sense of dogged re1:ention of 
opinion, is emphatically not a jewel. ; In 1884, 
the Fabian Society, the name itself suggestive of 
the policy of making haste slowly, was formed. 
Shaw became one of its leading members, and has 
been influential in the organization ever since; 



THE MAN 28 

his best essays on economic subjects have ap- 
peared in the society's publications. His tracts 
for the times have done much to make the 
Fabians known to a wider public than would 
otherwise be secured. In its original purpose, 
The Fabian Society was an emancipated, middle- 
class attempt to improve social conditions by 
wiser legislation. Mr. McCabe gives the follow- 
ing propositions as illustrative of the Fabian 
creed, in Shavian form: 

" That a life interest in the Land and Capi- 
tal of the nation is the birthright of every in- 
dividual ; 

" That the state should compete with private 
individuals, especially with parents — in providing 
happy homes for children, so that every child 
may have a refuge from the tyranny or neglect 
of its natural custodians; 

" That the established government has no more 
right to call itself the State than the smoke of 
London has to call itself the weather." 

As one studies this phase of Shaw's develop- 
ment and belief, and quite irrespective of one's 
acceptance of his views, the impression of the 
vast amount of laborious, technical writing he has 



24 BERNARD SHAW 

done in this special field comes as a needed cor- 
rective to the still prevalent notion, which sees 
him as a sort of mental butterfly spreading epi- 
grams along the social parterres. It may be 
added that a course in the Fabian Essays, sup- 
plemented by a reading of his fiction, especially 
" The Unsocial Socialist " and " The Irrational 
Knot," will give a good idea of a side of Shaw 
very likely to be overlooked by those who confine 
themselves to the plays, — and probably to a few 
of them only. It is not the younger Shaw alone 
we discover, feeling his way to a formulation of 
his opinions, but a man fiercely in earnest and 
proving it by the kind of thankless work he does. 
As vestryman and borough councilor later in his 
career he has shown his eager willingness to do 
his share in obscure social service. He refused 
to stand for Parliament and in his letter of decli- 
nation declared that he was too poor a man to 
meet the expenses involved — a novel reason which 
had behind it a keen sense of social obligation. 

The year 1885 was of moment in his career, 
because he then made the acquaintance of Wil- 
liam Archer, and that accomplished critic of the 
drama, then a fellow socialist, induced him to 



THE MAN 25 

leave novel writing, disastrous in the practical 
results, and turn to criticism. For several years 
thereafter he was doing those pungent little 
papers for The Saturday Review on music, art, 
and, later, drama, which made him recognized 
as a brilliant iconoclast of the pen. Particularly 
was the meeting and its result of significance 
because it associated him with dramatic criticism, 
and prepared him for play-writing. It is il- 
luminating to see how often the future play- 
wright is conducted to his metier by this path. 
Those criticisms of Shaw, now to be enjoyed 
in two portly volumes, are proof enough of his 
solid grounding in the basic principles of the 
craft. And they are plainly to be seen now as 
the most original, pioneer work of the time in 
this department of letters. 

It was Archer, moreover, who directly insti- 
gated the play-writing. He suggested a play in 
collaboration, a free treatment of the Rhinegold 
motive. Wagner was to be used for purposes 
of socialistic application. Two acts were written 
and laid aside. Finall}^, Shaw, who at the time 
was writing of art and was giving more attention 
to the stage because of his dramatic reviewing, 



26 BERNARD SHAW 

was pricked anew into an attempt to dress up the 
abandoned socialistic play by his interest in 
Grein's Independent Theatre movement, at that 
time sorely in need of material from English 
hands. The result was " Widowers' Houses," the 
first of the plays dubbed by him " pleasant and 
unpleasant ; " and whatever its defects, a plain 
notification that a man to reckon with had 
stepped into the English theatre. It was the first 
gun in the long warfare in which, as he put it, he 
fought the drama with plays ; in other words, op- 
posed current trash with that which appealed to 
brains, taste, and conscience, the intellectual 
theatre for which he, above all others in England, 
was to stand. This play-writing was to have a 
period of obscurity both as book literature and 
still more as stage product, as we have seen in 
the opening chapter. The Independent Theatre 
appealed but to the cognoscenti, who were then 
fewer even than they are now; the performances 
at this pioneer venture in the theatre of intelli- 
gence were at the best only a succes d'estime. 
" Widowers' Houses " will be examined along 
with the other pieces at the proper place; here 
it is sufficient to register the interesting way in 



THE MAN 27 

which Shaw was deflected from criticism and fic- 
tion to the stage. The Preface to the play tells 
the circumstances as he alone can. 

The personal history of Bernard Shaw from 
the inception of play-writing in 1892 to the pres- 
ent day — a period of well-nigh a quarter cen- 
tury — becomes in the main an account of his 
early rejection by contemporary judgment; 
the slow, grudging acceptance as his work forced 
itself into critical and, later, general, attention; 
with the change to a vogue eager, even avid, be- 
ginning with the success of " Candida " in 1903 ; 
a vogue carrying with it obvious dangers of 
wrong emphasis, hasty generalization, and misap- 
preciation. In a sense, Shaw is just the author 
to suffer in the house of his seeming friends. But 
it is accurate to say that for about fifteen years 
he has steadily gained not only in notoriety but 
in fame in the more solid meaning of the word; 
his dramas are more frequently played in various 
lands, their financial value has been enhanced, 
and a new piece by this author is an event of mo- 
ment in stage art, whether the city be Berlin, 
London, or New York. Abroad, no man save 
Shakspere is more frequently in the repertory of 



28 BERNARD SHAW 

serious playhouses. Decidedly, strikingly, he has 
arrived in the worldly recognition of his talents. 
Fame and fortune are his, and the bizarre early 
figure, lean and unconventionally picturesque, be- 
gins to look a la mode. It is the period of test, 
lest peradventure the rebel paradoxer wax sleek 
and debonair. But no such result is appar- 
ent at the present time. If Shaw now seem con- 
servative, it must be the change in latter-day 
opinion, rather than in him. He is still the 
writer who earlier startled us with his social re- 
bellion. Indeed, a study of his work in its evo- 
lution will bear out the statement that he is at 
fifty-five to sixty more progressive, more radical, 
than in earlier teaching. No more advanced 
thinking can be found in the entire range of his 
writings than the Preface to " Getting Married," 
and that to " Androcles and the Lion." 

But for the proper perspective, as we con- 
front the somewhat formidable spectacle of Ber- 
nard Shaw, still wearing the mask perhaps, but 
at least having conquered the Philistine who kept 
him out of the Promised Land of success, it is 
highly necessary to continue to see the man of 
the eighties: obscure fictionist, debater, social 



THE MAN 29 

worker, vestryman, and borough councilor, shabby 
publicist, and grubber in municipal details both 
dull and unimportant to the many who laugh 
over his dramatic scintillations. 

When he was ill and out at elbows, he married 
Miss Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, and 
his own account of it is so richly humorous that 
it were a sin not to reproduce it here: 

" I was very ill when I was married, altogether 
a wreck on crutches and in an old jacket which 
the crutch had worn to rags. I had asked my 
friends, Mr. Graham Wallas, of the London 
School Board, and Mr. Henry Salt, the biog- 
rapher of Shelley and De Quincey, to act as wit- 
nesses, and of course, in honor of the occasion 
they were dressed in their best clothes. The 
register never imagined I could possibly be the 
bridegroom; they took me for the inevitable beg- 
gar who completes all wedding processions. 
Wallas, who is considerably over six feet high, 
seemed to him to be the hero of the occasion and 
he was proceeding calmlj^ to marry him to my 
betrothed, when Wallas, thinking the formula 
rather strong for a mere witness, hesitated at 
the last moment and left the prize to me." 



30 BERNARD SHAW 

That nothing is known or mooted of Shaw's 
family life, in the case of a man who is the 
natural prey of the newsmongers, is the best com- 
ment upon its character, and a final compliment; 
no more concerning it is called for. 

It would seem as if Bernard Shaw at sixty had 
some of his best years ahead of him as dramatist, 
thinker, social influence. He is much in demand 
at gatherings where vital topics of the day are 
discussed, and the very fact that he is a man of 
place and property gives him a better chance 
perhaps to cope with the Philistine ; the latter 
is more likely to listen to one who is no longer 
the shabby buffoon, but the favored social figure. 
He does not strike one as of the type which 
shoots its shaft early, or is likely to be spoiled 
by worldly favor. Were he through as a writer 
today, the plays, some thirty of them, are his 
testament. But one imagines that the coming 
years, let us say the decade from sixty to sev- 
enty, will bring some highly characteristic con- 
tributions from his study in Adelphi Terrace or 
his country place at Ayot St. Lawrence. There 
is something peculiarly stimulating in the 
thought of Bernard Shaw passing from elderly 



THE MAN 31 

to old; I believe age will help him to be taken 
seriously, not because he will be more serious, but 
because even the light-minded may then perceive, 
aided by such marginal notes as Time adds, the 
essential quality of the man. And it will be said 
of him then, as it can be said now, though it is 
less likely to be, that he offers the spectacle of a 
good citizen, trying to leave a better social con- 
dition than he found; and in this like unto Car- 
lyle, Ruskin, William Morris. He has said that 
he deemed his life belonged to the community, and 
he has lived up to that pronunciamento. In re- 
fusing a newspaper interview, George Meredith 
declared that the public had no right to his pri- 
vate affairs, except that he " be reputedly a good 
citizen." This has also been Shaw's attitude, 
however much his career, superficially regarded, 
may appear to differ from the Box Hill magician. 
Privately, he has preserved the obscurity of good 
taste: publicly, he has done all in his power to 
exploit himself for the sake of his message. The 
Fabian essayist as such, could never win a gen- 
eral audience : the author of "Candida," " Fanny's 
First Play," and the Prefaces could! 

The Shaw of the early essays, the fiction and 



32 BERNARD SHAW 

the novels, he of Hyde Park meetings and radi- 
cal society debatings, is not quite the Shaw of 
1916; there would inevitably be some change in 
the growth of a mind worth talking about. But 
while there has been a redistribution of emphasis 
upon some of his convictions, a sloughing off of 
some of his first espousals of theory, and from 
time to time, these later years, a definite willing- 
ness to indulge a mood of irresponsible sportive- 
ness, on the whole we are presented today with 
the same G. B. S., save that the central social 
interest is deepened, and the articles of his credo 
are more clearly correlated, so as to produce an 
effect of unified social vision. Emphatically, this 
is not a thinker who, with the advance to full in- 
tellectual maturity, has either wearied of well 
doing, or, disappointed with his work and its re- 
ception, like Ibsen in " When We Dead Awaken," 
fallen back upon sad autobiography and no 
longer strives militantly to preach his gospel. 
Militant is just the word to use in describing 
Shaw as person and as social power; he is flam- 
ingly militant and never more so than now, albeit 
he has attained to an age and reached a position 
of influence which, broadly speaking, have a 



THE MAN SS 

marked tendency to quench individualism, — so 
often an uncomfortable kicker against the pricks. 
And so Shaw's life offers us another of the 
paradoxes which make up his portrait for the 
world: a man who has come to the conservatism 
of years and success, but remains hotly a radical ; 
a man who seems obstreperously forward in self- 
exploitation, and yet is in private life modestly a 
gentleman shrinking from any undue obtruding 
of his personal history. Shaw's name will to the 
end of the chapter be provocative of irritation to 
many; it will beget opposition and dislike, as a 
matter of course. But it is perfectly safe to say 
that no one who takes the trouble to see his life 
as it is, and to read his writings sufficiently to 
get the coordination of his teaching, will ever 
make the mistake of denying to this austere 
Puritan in disguise of playmaker a character far 
above unworthy ambition, insincerity, or any 
taint of violating the dictates of conscience for 
the sake of worldly gain. The man behind the 
mask is a very real and honest and high-aiming 
man, if once the mask be removed. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 

*• WIDOWERS' HOUSES" TO **ARMS 
AND THE MAN" 

It will be an aid to the proper understanding 
of Shaw, if from the first we distinguish between 
his matter and his manner. The proof of his 
genuineness as thinker and writer lies in an open- 
minded examination of his works, approaching 
them with a fortifying comprehension of his per- 
sonality and private history; also, as especially 
important, with a clear-eyed realization of cer- 
tain peculiarities in his way of conveying his 
message. These^ idiosyncrasies involve method 
and style, and must be accepted as the condition 
of a right relation between him and us. 

The danger, at least in Anglo-Saxon lands, of 
mixing fun and philosophy has been already re- 
ferred to: as well try to blend oil and water. 
Yet has Bernard Shaw boldly chosen, and at his 
peril, to jest while serious, to be serious, al- 

84 



THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 35 

though jesting. That he has confused, pained, 
dazzled not a few by such a procedure, cannot be 
doubted; the proofs are all about us. 

And as part of this danger, Shaw elected to 
use a form, the play, traditionally associated 
with entertainment, dedicate to frivolous themes 
and moods. When a man seizes upon the drama 
as a vehicle for instruction, while he is only re- 
verting to first principles of English drama, and 
indeed, of all drama, the trouble may be trusted 
to begin. The majority is sure to chant in 
plaintive chorus : " We don't want to be taught, 
to be made to think in the playhouse: we want 
to be amused. There is thinking enough, and un- 
pleasantness enough in life," a wail that rivals 
in hoary antiquity that other pathetic protest of 
the Philistine, " I know what I like ! " Shaw be- 
gan play-writing confronted by the historical 
attitude which declares that the playhouse is a 
secular indulgence; it belongs to a Saturday 
afternoon, and Sunday is just ahead when we can 
put on sober clothes of repentance, purge, leave 
sack, and live cleanly. And he met it by suf- 
ficiently hiding his seriousness within a frame- 
work of interesting fable and then so spicing his 



36 BERNARD SHAW 

sermon with condiments of wit and satire and 
comic scene and character, that the pleasure of 
the playhouse was preserved even for the light- 
minded, and the mourners became like unto those 
who rejoice. It has been a happy spectacle, this 
bouleversement of theatre-goers, and has added 
to the gaiety of nations. 

But the distinction between matter and man- 
ner goes deeper. Let a suggestion already made 
be here expanded. One must agree to accept the 
underlying sanity of a writer who steadily, per- 
sistently, it would almost seem, perversely, uses 
the method of exaggeration to make his points 
stick out; and who, once under way and exacer- 
bated before the images of crass stupidity whom 
as men of straw he sets up for attack, cannot 
for the life of him refrain from anger; a surface 
irritation growing on occasion into a thorough- 
going indignation that seizes the whole man. It 
is a generous, a noble rage, this of Bernard 
Shaw, against the social folly of his time, 
against the makers thereof and all their works. 
So forthright and sincere is it, that we must 
grant such a mind its way of warfare, and know 
that the positive degree of conviction begets the 



THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 37 

superlative of expression. This habit of ham- 
mering hard at the thing just in front of him 
makes Shaw of all men the one most dangerously 
liable to misrepresentation when detached from 
the particular application of his words and not 
squared by the general tenor of his teaching. 
In choosing his method, he runs the risk of this. 
His thought looks to totality of impression and 
asks on our part sufficient patience and compre- 
hension of his ideas as a whole to act as correc- 
tive. And this is just what few readers, and 
above all few theatre-goers, are willing or able 
to give; all such prefer the isolated smart saying 
to the textual meaning. Sometimes, a similar 
mistake has been made with Oscar Wilde, when 
critics have said that the sole value of " Lady 
Windermere's Fan," and " A Woman of No Im- 
portance," lay in their clever aphorisms and epi- 
grams, and so overlooked the constructive dra- 
matic virtues of those skilful and charming 
pieces. 

Shaw's method also involves that use of gen- 
eralization that is effective in the degree that it 
is dangerous, if one interpret literally. This is 
more than manner, of course, for it includes 



38 BERNARD SHAW 

mental processes, but is also rhetorical, a way 
of securing an effect. Almost any page of 
Shaw's illustrates the tendency. It is a very 
delicate question whether an element of wilfulness 
enters into this method of overstatement. Does 
Shaw, recognizing that he is rated as a chartered 
jester, take advantage of that license to use a 
manner likely to mislead those whom an unkind 
fate has deprived of a sense of humor? I think 
his habit of putting the case so much the 
stronger by the omission of qualifiers, is con- 
genital ; but is also accepted by him on the theory 
that you must strike hard if you would dint num- 
skulls. It is a way of making yourself heard of 
those who are hard of hearing. Perhaps the 
author did not fully realize it is also a way of 
producing puzzle in many minds. The compara- 
tive few will make the proper concessions and al- 
lowances. The essayist can take up his subject, 
turn it about, let its many facets flash in succes- 
sion before us, and in leisured fashion turn it in- 
side out for reflection and analysis. The phi- 
losopher can balance and concede, strive for a 
judicial tone, and leave you in a broad-minded un- 
certainty as to the conclusion. But the orator 



*' WIDOWERS' HOUSES" 39 

and dramatist both, the latter being an orator in 
this respect, must be partizan, special pleaders; 
must strike while the iron is hot; they substitute 
heat for light. And Shaw in his dialectics is es- 
sentially the orator, the rhetorician (as to 
method) passionately pleading, seeing but the 
one thing at the moment, and moving heaven 
and earth to attain his end, which is, convic- 
tion on the part of the hearer. This is the 
technic of conviction, as we might call it. What 
we have a right to demand of the orator is elo- 
quence and honesty; and Shaw has them in full 
measure. 

With this precautionary word, we may take 
up the evidence of the plays themselves, beginning 
with 

Widowers^ Houses 

Several Shavian qualities are exhibited in this 
interesting if tentative piece. It can easily be 
understood that in 1892 it would not succeed. 
Its date of production, December 9, 1892, at 
The Independent Theatre, London, must be quali- 
fied by the knowledge that it was begun (as de- 
scribed) seven years earlier, in 1885. If it was 



40 BERNARD SHAW 

in advance of the day in 1892, it was still more 
ahead of the time when conceived. Reduced to 
a brutally condensed statement, the play tells 
how a young man, loving a girl and winning her, 
is then repelled by the fact that her father's 
money is gained by iniquitous landlordism ; at first 
he refuses to have her, but finally, through sex- 
charm and also because he finds his own money 
is involved in these questionable investments, re- 
turns to her: a sufficiently cynical conclusion. 
The ending is " pleasant " only for those who do 
not think and prefer to have the curtain go down 
on a marriage of whatever quality. In reality, 
there is a sardonic ring to it; the author's at- 
titude, we feel, would be cynical, except that he 
does not so much blame Trench, the young lover, 
in his acceptance under pressure of a lower 
standard, as he blames us all, society in general. 
It is society, Shaw shows, that builds up a ma- 
chine which makes possible such complications. 
The criticism is not so much of human nature as 
of the social complex in the meshes of which our 
weak humanity has become entangled. 

The play, compared with more mature work, 
seems young in definite particulars; the comic 



"WIDOWERS' HOUSES" 41 

characters are sketchy and exaggerated when 
set beside such a masterpiece, for example, as 
William the waiter in " You Never Can Tell." 
The sociological fervor is obtruded too obviously, 
and there is an effect of rounding out the plot 
to a desired conclusion, the reconciliation of the 
lovers at the expense of logic of characteriza- 
tion; although, as I have noted, it is possible to 
argue that an average well-meaning fellow like 
Trench, sensitive to the good but unable under 
temptation to live up to his ideals, might do 
exactly what he does: compromise. Technically, 
the handling testifies in some ways to the date of 
composition, since it shows conventions since out- 
grown; both soliloquy and aside are used, though 
not freely. 

But in many respects this drama has the 
author's earmarks, and announces a new man in 
the British theatre. We have the device of 
elaborate stage directions and character delinea- 
tions, addressed not only to the reader, but, with 
Shaw, to the intelligent actor, or stage manager, 
as well; no others need apply! We have the 
Preface, in its less expanded form, which was to 
become in the works in general such a weapon, 



42 BERNARD SHAW 

and such a delightful and illuminating addition 
to the text itself. We have a keen sense of 
scene as such, vivid characterization with a feel- 
ing for contrasts, and a dialogue which, looking 
to Ibsen for a realistic model, is in no respects 
behind him for verisimilitude, vigor, and variety. 
It is safe to say that no such dialogue had ap- 
peared in the English theatre since Congreve. 
For its earnest, satiric purpose, with the relief 
of scintillant wit and atmospheric humor, it is 
unsurpassed. The frequent statement that all 
Shaw's stage folk talk Shavian language is flatly 
contradicted by a delightful comic personage 
like Lickcheese, whose name, by the way, sug- 
gests that when the author began dramatic writ- 
ing, he was willing to do what later he would 
have eschewed: place descriptive type names 
upon his stage creatures. On the side of struc- 
ture, it is worth observing that, like Ibsen, Shaw 
avoids mere curtain effects, yet has the instinct 
of the true dramatist for heightened and sus- 
pensive moments ; the end of the second act is an 
illustration. This is the French feeling for 
coups de theatre, with an added ease and natural- 
ness in reproducing life. There is also genuine 



"WIDOWERS' HOUSES" 43 

progress to a climax, whether the piece be re- 
garded as a love story or social thesis. In the 
former case, the diagram reads : Act I, engage- 
ment; Act II, engagement broken; Act III, mak- 
ing it up. On the other supposition, we have: 
Act I, a young man innocent of social rottenness ; 
Act II, disillusion; Act III, acceptance of lower 
standards. 

The outstanding feature of " Widowers' 
Houses," however, is its theme, its note of social 
protest. It is story and character study for the 
sake of drawing attention to the evils of slum 
landlordism and to the fact that we are all im- 
plicated in it: caught in the social web, albeit un- 
wittingly, and our brother's keeper, whether we 
will or no. If the details of story are trimmed 
to the thesis, it is not easy to see wherein the 
general picture is not in drawing. Many re- 
spectable folk do have investments in insanitary, 
ramshackle tenements, and are sometimes loath 
to tear them down in favor of" better buildings, 
when so doing means an assault upon income. 
Or what is more probable, such seemly people 
are content to leave the dirty work to those em- 
ployed for the purpose, without inquiring too 



44 BERNARD SHAW 

curiously into the minutiae of the proceedings; 
their consciences thus being preserved from con- 
viction of sin. And there would seem to be noth- 
ing improbable in the spectacle of a young man 
who has reformatory instincts become worldly- 
wise when not only his pocket is tapped but the 
loss of his girl is threatened. It is all one of 
life's little ironies, familiar enough to the ob- 
serving mind. 

The treatment of love in the play and the con- 
ception of woman embodied in Blanche are also 
definitely Shavian. Shaw cannot abide the usual 
sentimental depiction of the passion of love. He 
attacks it on all occasions. I do not recall a 
seriously tender love scene in the conventional 
sense in all his dramas. It may be remarked 
parenthetically, that this affords a striking 
proof of his power as a dramatist, since the love 
motive is the central appeal of stage stories, as 
it is of fiction in general. The Shavian idea is 
that the life-force for its own biologic purposes 
provides a sex glamour which hides the facts and 
in making " love matches " by the million, also 
makes trouble for the twain and for society at 
large. He would have men and women realize 



"THE PHILANDERER" 45 

what they really are, in order to come together 
in mutual respect and affection as comrades who 
shall build homes and conserve the interests of 
the state. In " Man and Superman," as we shall 
see, he laughs at his own counsel of perfection; 
as Ibsen in "The Wild Duck" laughs at his 
own idealism wrongly applied or embodied. 
Blanche is a rather unlovely exemplar of the life- 
force ; she gets her man and ethical principles 
can go hang. She is her father's daughter. It 
would be quite unfair to name Blanche as a typi- 
cal Shavian woman. She is simply one aspect, 
and not a pleasing one, of what he conceives as 
the truth concerning the sexes. 

Altogether, then, " Widowers' Houses " fur- 
nished proof of a new talent in the British 
theatre, and contained some of the distinctive 
characteristics of the writer, while not without 
signs of being journeyman work. 

The Philanderer 

In " The Wild Duck," as stated, Ibsen 
satirizes the misuse of his own idealism. In 
" The Philanderer," Shaw's next play, written 



46 BERNARD SHAW 

in 1893, and like its predecessor for The Inde- 
pendent Theatre, but not produced until Febru- 
ary 5, 1907, at the Court Theatre, London, 
Shaw satirizes the situation when fools and fad- 
dists get hold of the Norwegian's ideas and pro- 
cede to juggle with them in relation to their own 
lives. This drama has never been one of the pro- 
nounced Shaw successes, although it was by no 
means a failure when seen in New York and Chi- 
cago. The less popular early pieces of Shaw, 
given now as an intelligent theatre audience is 
fast being, prepared by various influences at 
work, play far better than they did at the time of 
their first appearance. Still, there is a quality 
in this play which makes against wide accept- 
ance, and it has definite defects. Primarily, it 
seems a satire on Ibsen, and this had more 
pertinence twenty-odd years ago than at present. 
But it also satirizes certain other social fal- 
lacies, which are favorite objects of attack with 
Shaw: doctors and their profession in general (to 
be amplified in "The Doctor's Dilemma"), vivi- 
section in particular, and the current laws and 
conventions of marriage (also to be extended in 
treatment in "Getting Married"). Because of 



"THE PHILANDERER" 47 

these imperfect and foolish laws, Shaw is of the 
opinion that a type such as the philanderer, 
Charteris, becomes a frequent phenomenon. We 
notice here the author's sturdy and oft reiterated 
faith in the efficacy of legislation to improve 
upon human nature as it acts and reacts in so- 
ciety and the state. 

Regarded as architecture, this dispersedness 
of attack tends to lessen the effect of unity in 
the play ; as a story, the love affairs of Charteris, 
though amusing enough, are not of sufficient 
strength, especially in view of his somewhat un- 
sympathetic character, to justify that side of 
the appeal. The piece carries largely by reason 
of its incidental fun, and its cleverness of scene 
and dialogue. The seriousness of purpose is in- 
jured by a levity of tone which has an effect of 
being for its own sake. Yet a playwright of ex- 
traordinary ability is plainly indicated in such a 
handling of situation as that which closes the 
first act, or in much of the dialogue, illustrated 
by this speech of Charteris's: 

Charteris. I tell you seriously, I'm the 
matter. Julia wants to marry me: I want 
to marry Grace. Enter Julia. Alarums 



48 BERNARD SHAW. 

and excursions. Exit Grace. Enter you 
and Craven. Subterfuges and excuses. 
Exeunt Craven and Julia. And here we 
are. That's the whole story. Sleep over 
it. Good night. {He leaves). 

CuTHBERTSON {staving after him). Well, 
I'll be — {tlie act drop descends). 
As a tour de force, this sends one back to the 
fifth act unraveling in " Cymbeline." 

The feeling born, rather than made, for theatre 
effects can be detected throughout this early 
piece of a man, all of whose work proves the gift. 
Witness the entrance of Julia in act one, which 
is but one of several instances. The conduct- 
ment of the Ibsen talk is in the highest degree 
an example of keen satiric comedy, with sparkle 
and palpable hits in every line. For 1916, per- 
haps the mostjnteresting thing in the play is the 
contrasted feminine portraiture: we get the 
woman who grabs her man — an earlier Ann — 
the womanly woman who waits for him, and, 
God save the mark, the masculine woman who is 
neither the clinging vine nor the truculent ama- 
zon of the opposite extreme. You can respect 
the woman who clings as the exponent of a 



" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 49 

pleasant tradition ; and the woman who conquers, 
for she helps the race to exist. But the woman 
who wobbles, being neither Venus nor Lucina, she 
is an unpalatable joke. So far as he shows any 
bias, Shaw's sympathy is apparently with Grace, 
the womanly woman. 

Mrs. Warren^s Profession 

The next play was the first one to make its 
author a popular issue. It was written the lat- 
ter part of 1893, for The Independent Theatre, 
but was first seen at The New Lyric Club in 
London, January 5, 1902, nearly a decade later; 
proof of the slow winning of favor by Shaw at 
this time. It was forbidden by the Censor in 
1893, and only privately given in London at the 
later date; was stopped by the police both in 
New Haven and New York, when it was 
produced in America, though afterwards per- 
mitted in the metropolis. The date at the 
Garrick Theatre, New York, was October 30, 
1905. It has always been a storm center 
with Shaw, as has " Ghosts " with Ibsen. To 
understand it, is to understand the former in 



50 BERNARD SHAW 

much of his central faith and impulse of 
work. 

The objections to it might be summed up as 
plain speaking, repellent theme, and a lack of 
" sentiment " as usually understood, especially in 
the heroine, Vivie; together with a general hard 
rationalism in the treatment of sex love and the 
family relations. Some, too, are offended by the 
facetiousness and fun introduced in connection 
with Frank and Praed. Even so doughty a 
Shavian as biographer Henderson thinks the 
tone of the play injured in this respect. The 
only excuse to be offered would be that in a 
drama so grim and drastic in theme, the allevia- 
tion of humor is necessary: something that Ibsen 
chose to ignore, no doubt to the loss of many fol- 
lowers. It is an artistic question: the question 
whether the composition is tonally harmed by 
" the laugh mistimed in tragic presences." 

As to the strictures mentioned, short shrift 
may be made of the first, the frank handling of 
a disagreeable subject. Modern art has pretty 
well decided to accept the extension of subject 
in the interests of a broader study of life and to 
base judgment upon the question of how the 



" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 51 

thing is done. The treatment of sex with Shaw 
is at once frank and high-minded; if we object 
to it, we will have none of him. No piece in the 
Shavian repertory is further removed from any 
concession to the " pleasant." Distinctly, this 
is one of the " unpleasant " plays, perhaps the 
most " unpleasant " of his career. And, it may 
be to the winning of a better hearing for his 
views, in his later work he modified the uncom- 
promising, grim austerity of the treatment here. 

The situation posited is this: a mother who 
has made herself wealthy by maintaining houses 
of ill-fame has kept her daughter in complete 
ignorance of the fact, given her a college educa- 
tion, reared her as a lady. The daughter dis- 
covers the truth, recoils from her mother in dis- 
gust, and leaves her forever. The tragedy and 
pathos of this is found in the mother's sincere 
love for the daughter; and the suspensive inter- 
est (which every good play must have) centers 
in the question: what will the daughter do.^^ 

In the handling of this obviously tremendous 
situation, there are technical faults. Coincidence 
is stretched in the meeting of Gardiner and Mrs. 
Warren ; the falling together of Frank and Vivie, 



52 BERNARD SHAW 

lovers yet bound by kin ties, might be criticised 
in the same way, as well as on the ground of 
taste; and the melodrama of the rifle incident in 
act third is possibly incongruous in such a play; 
to which, however, the author might reply that 
he was making a stage play, and had to bear in 
mind the intellectually overtaxed. 

But all such objections, technical or esthetic, 
are as naught in the face of the vital value of a 
drama which remains one of the most original 
and powerful of the day. It has a fine theme, 
brilliantly written, effectively presented. A 
daughter brought up in ignorance of her mother's 
shameful occupation, learns the truth and re- 
jects the mother; there, in more condensed state- 
ment than I gave it before, is the argument; its 
bullet-like brevity shows how dramatic is the 
play's central idea. There is no better test of a 
real play than the readiness with which it lends 
itself to a succinct, clear statement like this. In- 
cidental, it would seem, to the central treatment, 
the daughter also rejects her lover and goes in 
for a lifetime of spinster independent work. 
But this is germane, after all, to Shaw's thesis: 
that society, not Mrs. Warren, is responsible for 



" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 53 

the harlot, and that woman's economic independ- 
ence, once won, will be the deathblow to that 
most reverend of all female professions. 

The way in which, as a whole, this superb 
subject-matter is handled cannot but awaken ad- 
miration, in all who know technic when they 
see it. 

In the first-act curtain speech, we get a hint 
of what is to come; in act second the mother is 
half revealed to her child; in act third the full 
revelation comes; and the final act shows us the 
sequent separation. Here is skilfully graduated 
growth with an organic texture that is close- 
knit and congruous. The technic is basically 
that which accepts the formula of Ibsen and 
adapts it to particular needs and personal feel- 
ing. There are but six characters, and the ex- 
position is worked into the body of the play. 
Yet to use four acts with a number of scene 
changes savors of twenty years ago. As to char- 
acterization, whatever may be thought of Frank 
and his father, the other three persons are splen- 
did examples of dramatic representation: Mrs. 
Warren, creature of a vicious system, likable in 
her way, even admirable at moments in her hon- 



54 BERNARD SHAW 

est, unrealizing Philistinism, a pathetic, tragic, 
ironic human figure; a very great piece of por- 
trait drawing; Vivie, intensely the new type of 
our day, shrinking in every fiber from her 
mother yet valiantly desirous of doing her jus- 
tice; hardly inferior to the other two, Praed, an 
unforgettable picture of the elderly sensualist. 
The great scene where the mother and daughter 
clash and part, is on the whole Shaw's most un- 
questionable chef d'ceuvre in the manipulation 
of climax, and one of the very few great serious 
scenes in English-speaking drama of our genera- 
tion ; paralleled only by Galsworthy's " Justice," 
Pinero's " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," and 
possibly one or two more ; and superior to any 
other for sheer originality. The dialogue in the 
climactic moments of the action has an idiomatic 
concision and happy inevitability of phrasing 
that are above praise. Nothing in the English 
theatre is better, for its purpose. Memorable 
lines are frequent, like the terrible one spoken by 
Mrs. Warren as she tries to convince her daugh- 
ter : " Every woman has to get some man to be 
good to her." There is woman's social saga 
epitomized in one short, simple sentence. 



" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 55 

One feels that had Shaw continued to write 
plays of the caliber of this, he would have been 
a greater dramatist but might not so success- 
fully have insinuated his teachings. 

Certainly in this play the economic and social 
thinker unslings all his guns in an attack never 
quite equaled since for bitter insistence and 
stark presentation. It looks as if he recognized 
he had been extreme in method here, and decided 
to mitigate the message hereafter. In any event, 
the idea of the drama is well worth attention. 
Shaw believes that poverty is the cardinal social 
crime: a notion developed more fully in "Major 
Barbara." Make possible a comfortable living 
wage for women, recognize maternity at its true 
value to the state, and you throttle prostitution. 
If there be fallacy in this, it is to be found in 
overlooking two classes of women: those who 
prefer vice for its own sake; and those incapable 
of earning an honest wage. 

In Bernard Shaw's schemes for social better- 
ment in general, there is always the faith in the 
natural good of human beings: the assumption 
that if given a chance, they will rise to it. One 
honors the thinker's generous interpretation, 



56 BERNARD SHAW 

even if doubtfully querying whether he do not 
place human nature too high. It is a curious 
thing that one who seems always declaiming in 
the spirit of the scoffer against some moral or 
social backsliding, like a Daniel come to judg- 
ment, bases his whole philosophy upon a 
thoroughly optimistic conception of the ability 
of human beings to do right when favorably en- 
vironed to do so. I sincerely believe that this 
archenemy to all sentimentality becomes ro- 
mantically sentimental in this favorable opinion 
of his fellows ; and surely he is all the more lova- 
ble because of it. 

But the main contention that, in such measure 
as we remove the economic necessity of sin, we 
tend to lessen the social evil, is sound; and 
Shaw's drama assuming this, finds its justifica- 
tion, whatever of exaggeration there may be in 
driving the idea home. 

If " Mrs. Warren's Profession " be bad art 
because its theme is non-esthetic, we must, to be 
consistent, give up along with it, " Oedipus the 
King," several of Shakspere's most powerful 
tragedies, and representative works by Ibsen and 
Brieux. The condemnation cuts off more heads 



" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 57 

than one, and heads that have a kingly look. As 
a matter of fact, and cause for congratulation, 
we are hearing less and less of such foolish re- 
strictions upon serious art. The thesis is pat to 
our day, and worth while, since it deals with one 
of the permanently important problems of civili- 
zation. It is cleanly, strongly, and skilfully han- 
dled and the drama containing it is an intel- 
lectual stimulant and a social document of great 
significance. The late William James declared 
that in this piece Shaw made us see, (as only the 
stage can make us), the difference between con- 
vention and conscience, and showed that you can 
tell the truth, if you only do it benignantly. 
Disagreement there will always be as to its place 
in Shaw's repertory; some would put it at the 
top. More often, the praise awarded it is 
timid on the ground of its unpleasantness. To 
my mind, having stage value, skill, dramatic 
clinch, and literary execution in view, it belongs 
with the few masterpieces, if the first position is 
not to be given it. 



58 BERNARD SHAW 

Arms and the Man 

Shaw was now steadily and vigorously pur- 
suing the vocation of dramatist, although with 
small encouragement as yet. Both " The Phi- 
landerer " and " Mrs. Warren's Profession," as 
we have seen, were written for The Independent 
Theatre, but not produced there. His next 
piece, written in the early months of the follow- 
ing year, 1894, and to prove one of his 
permanently successful stage plays, was " Arms 
and the Man," first seen at The Avenue Theatre, 
London, April 21, where it was played until 
July 7, an eleven weeks' run and the first indica- 
tion that his work could make anything like a 
popular appeal. It was produced by Richard 
Mansfield at The Herald Square Theatre, New 
York, September 17, 1894, but its reception 
was but lukewarm, though the few recog- 
nized its merit, and it afforded Mansfield one 
of the most sympathetic roles of his career. 
December of the same year it was given at 
the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, under the title 
Helden. These facts are a plain proof that 
the tide had turned and Shaw had become a 



" ARMS AND THE MAN '* 59 

man to reckon with in the practical play- 
house. 

" Arms and the Man " is a brilliant satirical 
comedy belonging with the group of " pleasant " 
plays of his own description. It is essentially a 
drama, an amusing story told within the frame- 
work of a conventional plot, but novel in char- 
acter, treatment and lebensanschauung, behind 
the fun. It was received by some critics as an at- 
tack upon the military ideal, and no doubt that 
is involved; Shaw, generally speaking, protests 
against war, and often satirizes it. But the 
reader who puts himself to the trouble to har- 
monize the opinion expressed in a special play 
with the author's view in general, will see that 
Sergius is satirized primarily as a pseudo ideal- 
ist and that Raina, the woman of his choice, is 
obsessed with the same notions. Here, as al- 
ways, Shaw is aiming at the false social ideals 
which injure human life. In this case, he laughs 
at the conventional picture of the " hero," who 
in his spick-and-span uniform exposes himself in 
front of a tree instead of hiding behind it that 
he may live to fight another day: Bluntschli's 
way. In short, Bluntschli is the true soldier. 



60 BERNARD SHAW 

muddj-booted mercenary though he be, because 
he strips war of its specious decorative colors 
and shows it for the grim business it is. He 
works for wage, does his duty, and wears unbe- 
coming clothes. And Raina, when the scales 
drop from her eyes, turns from the man-doll 
Sergius to the real fighter. Incidentally, there 
is a good deal of irony against family preten- 
sions, pure-blooded nationality, and idealism at 
large; all of which broadens the appeal of the 
drama as amusement. And it should be observed 
that, unlike the preceding plays, the satire is not 
bitter and savage, but genial and hence all the 
more effective. The idealists reform, the author 
seems to be enjoying things himself. The change 
of tone is noticeable, and no doubt an element in 
its success. Whether Shaw, struggling play- 
wright, resolv€d to court a quicker success by 
conforming to the public desire for theatre en- 
tertainment, while just as earnest as ever to pre- 
sent his views, may be left to individual opinion. 
The important point is, that his principles are 
not sacrificed; method not view is altered. 

" Arms and the Man " is above all a good 
play. The character drawing is clear, interest- 



" ARMS AND THE MAN " 61 

ing, arresting, well-contrasted. Many of the 
best bits of dialogue are mots de caractere, 
their wit derived from character and scene, not 
from the author outside the drama. Not only 
are the principals, Sergius, Bluntschli, and 
Raina, firmly limned and delightful, but sec- 
ondary folk like Petkoff and Catherine are quite 
as successful in their due place. Shaw does a 
new thing in the penetrating psychology of the 
serving class in the persons of Nicola and Louka. 
The drama is also conspicuous as stage specta- 
cle and effect. How clever is the first act, and 
how novel in its use of material that might so 
easily be made suggestively unpleasant if coarsely 
handled. Shaw, as noted, is the most daring man 
of the English theatre in his use of subject- 
matter and plain speech; but at the same time 
the freest from offense; this Puritan playwright 
writes with clean hands and a pure heart, and the 
most ascetic priest could not be further removed 
from sensualistic taint. The first act is a capital 
start to catch the unthinking in a play in which 
the remaining acts constitute a comedy of char- 
acter and dialogue rather than action in the 
usual external sense. Allowing for the difference 



62 BERNARD SHAW 

between comedy and comi-tragedy, this opening 
act might be compared with the similar act of 
Ibsen's " Little Eyolf." The construction, 
judged conventionally, is peculiar, a good exam- 
ple of the way Shaw blazes trails and broadens 
stage technic by his freedom of handling. Most 
often in a three-act drama, good building calls 
for act one to be longest of the three, and the 
last the shortest. Acts one, two, and three thus 
move in a descending scale of time. But in this 
specimen, act one is by far the briefest; the sec- 
ond act very much the longest, while the final act 
is less than half the second in length, yet much 
longer than the first. Compared with the act 
divisions that are customary, the proportions 
seem all awry. The reason, of course, lies in the 
nature of the piece, and the playwright's pur- 
pose. Instead of choosing in act first, after the 
usual fashion, to get his story well underway 
and to develop characters, he puts an incident 
before the audience upon which the whole story 
hangs, and does his main character unfolding in 
subsequent acts; much what Ibsen does in "Lit- 
tle Eyolf." 

In other words, act one is almost like a pro- 



" ARMS AND THE MAN '* 63 

logue, in place of the regular exposition which 
characterizes the piece bien fait, the well-made 
play of the French. Nevertheless, the few things 
necessary to know, Sergius's relation to Raina, 
for instance, are clearly revealed. How natural 
that device of the photograph to bring this re- 
sult. Looking to popularity, this method of 
opening a play is sure to be better liked than 
the subtler Ibsenian way. 

Having, then, got the situation before us in an 
effective prologue, Shaw lets the story work out 
logically, with the purpose to show the disillu- 
sionment of Raina of her lover and her turning 
to Bluntschli. And since he desires to prepare 
the stage for the skilful complications of act 
third, where obviously the scene a faire is to be 
shown, he takes plenty of time in act second. I 
would particularly draw attention to the treat- 
ment of the situation in the last act, because it 
is a notable example of his dramaturgy, and one 
of the most effective bits of craftsmanship in 
modern comedy; to appreciate it to the full, is 
to testify to one's knowledge of play-making. 

Occasionally, Shaw allows his fun to interfere 
with psychology: as in Raina's remark about the 



64 BERNARD SHAW 

washing of one's hands, which is certainly rather 
startling, and hardly to be expected from a 
woman of her breeding. And the mating of 
Sergius and Louka verges on farce, only to be 
excused by the delicious reductio ad ahsurdum of 
the Sergian motto, " I never withdraw." 

To the thoughtful, " Arms and the Man " is 
Shavian through and through, and happily so, 
because surcharged with stimulating suggestion. 
How remorselessly does he strip war of all its 
romance, all his work indeed being one battle 
against the " romance " which to his mind so 
viciously misleads humanity: and how keen his 
analysis of so-called bravery, a description that 
Crane's " Red Badge of Courage " verifies. 
Bluntschli's purely nervous start when Raina 
throws away the box of candy is illuminatingly 
discriminating, and we may admire the superb 
common sense of the distinction made between 
physical and moral courage. The proper 
emphasis is put upon the latter. 

The democratic note is strong in the play, as 
in the passage where " position and worldly 
goods " are excoriated. As a minor but amusing 
element in the drama, we may perhaps see a 



" ARMS AND THE MAN " 65 

satiric comment on the grandiloquent air assumed 
by a small, unimportant principality: the little 
town in the Balkans takes itself so very seriously ! 

By writing "Arms and the Man," Shaw 
made himself known, — at least to those best fitted 
to judge, — as a playwright who could produce a 
clever light comedy not without farcical tend- 
encies, of genuine stage quality and acting value, 
which yet contained food for thought and be- 
longs in that advanced modern theatre where 
civilized entertainment is offered to the public 
desiring it; at that time, and still, a rare com- 
bination. 

In passing it may be worth noting that " Arms 
and the Man " is the only play of Shaw's so far 
to be remade into an opera libretto ; perhaps it 
is known to more people as Oscar Strauss's " The 
Chocolate Soldier " than in its original form. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 

"CANDIDA" TO "THE ADMIRABLE 
BASHVILLE " 

Candida 

As the drama just described was in popularity 
and adaptability to theatre needs a step in ad- 
vance of what went before, so the next play 
marked a still greater forward movement of the 
fast-gaining playwright. " Candida," certainly 
one of his happiest, best, and most representative 
dramas, to some critics deserving of the place of 
honor, was written later in the year 1894, which 
registers " Arms and the Man." It was taken 
on tour by The Independent Theatre Company, 
after a premiere in Aberdeen, during the spring 
of 1897, again in 1898, and had its first London 
production on April 6, 1904. Dresden witnessed 
it November 19, 1903, at the Konigliches Schau- 
spielhaus; and it was done in New York at The 
Princess Theatre, December 9, 1903. Shaw's 

66 



" CANDIDA " 67 

first appearance in French was in this piece, the 
place and time being February 7, 1907, at the 
Theatre Royal du Pare in Brussels. The Parisian 
production dates May 7, 1908. It will be noticed 
that " Candida " was given in this country be- 
fore it was in London. And it may be added that 
the performance of this drama by Arnold Daly 
in New York was the first popular success in 
this land secured by any Shaw play. Mans- 
field's venture had been no more than a critical 
success. 

The remarkable thing about " Candida," — or 
one remarkable thing where there are many, — is 
that it established itself as a genuine theatre 
piece at once and is hugely liked of the general 
theatre-going public; yet is in reality, touching 
suggestion and meaning, a subtle and difficult 
drama, many readings of which do not altogether 
quiet guess and theory. When it was read to Sir 
Charles Wyndham, that actor manager declared 
it to be twenty years ahead of its time; Shaw 
waited for the time to catch up with him, and it 
did so in much less than the allotted twenty 
years ! But " Candida " and its history are in- 
structive, because they testify loudly to the 



6s BERNARD SHAW 

author's ability to make the double appeal: to in- 
terest the general and particular. Again it is a 
case of new wine in old bottles, and the many are 
so enamored of the bottles that they do not 
mind the heady quality of the drink. 

Viewed casually, we see this play as a satire on 
the French triangle of husband, wife, and lover, 
with the positions deranged; the sensation is se- 
cured, not by the fleeing of the wife with the 
lover, which has been staled into the common- 
place by reiteration, but by the wife's cleaving 
to the husband, which has all the merit of 
novelty. The comic characters are so funny: 
Candida's father, the inimitable Prossy, another 
ten-strike of low comedy, and Marchbanks, who 
is not so much comic as comi-tragic ; and the cen- 
tral scene is so dramatic, that quite apart from 
the main problem of the piece, there is plenty to 
amuse and enchain attention. 

But altogether aside from its wholesome and 
enjoyable satire upon an unhealthy sort of play 
much in vogue at the time and not entirely dead 
yet, and also setting aside its ample provision in 
characters, dialogue, and situation for theatre 
entertainment, what does the dram.a mea,n.? The 



"CANDIDA" 69 

critics are inclined to propose various theories; 
there is considerable disagreement concerning 
the author's intention in writing it, and the par- 
ticular significance he imputes to the clergyman, 
to Candida herself and to the young poet, 
Marchbanks ; especially to the last two. What 
just is Candida as wife and woman? And what 
is Marchbanks, as a type in himself and in rela- 
tion to the married woman whom he fancies him- 
self in love with? Our decision on one of these 
queries affects the decision on the other. As to 
the heroine, to call her such, the author proffers 
us some help, although it is not altogether satis- 
factory. Whimsically he declares Candida to be 
outrageous, highly " improper." Dare we trust 
him here? I take him to mean that she so ap- 
pears to the conventions, being a life-force woman 
who in justifying her instincts, her love for her 
man, is doing that which is above all so-called 
moral law. In this sense only is she " unprinci- 
pled." Far nearer to what Shaw intended in this 
portraiture is the note, which I quote in Chapter 
VIII, where the author's general poetic signifi- 
cance is summarized. 

When in sportive moments we find him attack- 



70 BERNARD SHAW 

ing Candida or another we must understand it 
as an indulgence which he allows himself at the 
expense of the obtuse. Of course he regards 
Candida as a completely trustworthy person, and 
has a real penchant for her. 

This granted, you have a cue for Marchbanks. 
Candida is not a self-indulgent woman who en- 
joys having an interesting pseudo-Shelley in love 
with her. Nor in the fine final scene is she auc- 
tioning herself off, so to say, to the highest bid- 
der. She never has had a thought of leaving her 
husband. She simply wishes to teach March- 
banks something of the deeper values of woman- 
hood. And Marchbanks, young and immature 
and, if you will, silly as he is, is a true poet, and 
no mistake about it. Secure in her own love for 
her husband, she can be and is the other's real 
friend by teaching him the truth about women. 
She teaches him a nobler conception of woman 
than his stained-glass idealism; nobler, because 
based on the truth about human nature; but he, 
after the manner of the young idealist, will have 
none of it and leaves what he deems the " greasy 
Paradise " of a bona fide home for the great 
outer world of dream, where he may pursue the 



" CANDIDA " 71 

" eternal feminine " which draws him on. No 
hausfrau for him. He goes forth with a new 
note in his voice, according to the stage direc- 
tion : " a man's voice, no longer a boy's." But he 
is the picture of the true idealist in this respect; 
he sees he must chase perfection as he conceives 
it, give up the attempt at personal happiness be- 
cause " life is nobler than that." This is the 
serious and worthy side of Marchbanks, over- 
looked by most critics, plainly indicated in the 
valuable light-throwing words above quoted. 
That the author is making scornful fun of 
Marchbanks, and nothing else, is flatly contra- 
dicted by the fact that he places in his mouth 
some of the most searching and beautiful sayings 
about poetry to be found anywhere. As where 
he cries, " All the love in the world is longing to 
speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, 
shy. That is the world's tragedy." And again: 
when Prossy, with her superb Philistinism, mis- 
understanding all he says, advises him to go 
talk to himself, and he replies : " That is what 
all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; 
and the world overhears them. But it's horribly 
lonely not to hear some one else talk sometimes." 



72 BERNARD SHAW 

If Shaw did not wish Marchbanks to be sym- 
pathetic at all for us, but to appear only as a 
febrile esthete, he should never have given him 
such utterances as these: any more than Shak- 
spere, with the purpose of making Shylock repel- 
lent, should have written sundry magnificent 
speeches which make him forever a deeply pa- 
thetic, appealing figure. The critics who, at the 
time of the first presentation of this comedy in 
America, declared that the poet went out from 
the Morell house to commit suicide, were cer- 
tainly, in Shaw's descriptive phrase, " mentally 
overtaxed." 

So much for the characterization. The satiric 
fun, so sparkling and satisfying, inheres in the 
situation while it is logical with the characters. 
Prossy is deliciously consistent in her British im- 
perviousness to. aught but the practical; a lim- 
ited, honest soul. The clergyman assistant is 
natural in his weakness and strength. The 
vulgar father. Burgess, may be a bit overdone 
after the way of Dickens, but is a highly amus- 
ing figure in his offensively genial self-approval ; 
inevitably he begets eugenistic questionings as to 
how a Candida could have come from his loins, 



" CANDIDA " 73 

the best answer being that we do not know her 
mother; or that Bernard Shaw is not averse 
from poking a little satire at the eugenists, in- 
cluding himself. Morell might have been, in the 
cheap handling which tries for obvious contrasts, 
an unsympathetic clerical; instead, he is a 
thoroughly likable showing of the modern so- 
cialist parson, a later Kingsley. His trouble is, 
that, a good man, he cheats himself as many 
good men do, with catchwords and theories. If 
he would just be good naturally, being built that 
way, and enjoy it, Shaw would quite approve of 
him. Candida's straightforwardness in relation 
to him, her delightful feminine seeing-through 
his supposed strength to his very real weakness 
and hence need of her, is a master stroke. Here 
one is reminded of Barrie's heroine in " What 
Every Woman Knows." Candida's unsubtlety 
it is that makes her elusive. 

Technically, this play is admirable; its con- 
struction exhibits organic growth with steadily 
increasing tension to one of the best climactic 
scenes in modern drama, in the final act where 
Candida makes her choice between the two men; 
an obligatory scene projected so far forward as 



74 BERNARD SHAW 

to fall at the very end of the piece. The 
elaborate description with which the play opens 
is the best example, so far in the list, of Shaw's 
attempt to do for the reader what scenery does 
for the spectator. The curtains, though unob- 
trusive, are excellent. High comedy, with layers 
of farce, melodrama, and tragedy, is what Shaw 
has dared and done in " Candida," without wrest- 
ing it from its genre in that unpleasant way 
which makes a confusion in the spectator's mind 
that injures enjoyment. And this, in spite of 
plenty of puzzlement, both for the wayfaring 
man and the elect. Truly, it is but by being 
bold that such breath-taking things can be 
achieved ! 



How He Lied to Her Husband 

Since the jeu d'esprit called " How He Lied 
to Her Husband " is a pendant to the preceding 
play, I will violate chronology and discuss it 
here. Written in 1904, it was produced with 
" The Man of Destiny " at The Berkeley Lyceum 
Theatre in New York, September 26 of that 
year, the two one-act pieces being necessary to 



" HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND " 75 

fill out the evening bill. In explaining the cir- 
cumstances leading him to make this little ex- 
travaganza, the author plainly implies that the 
root of the matter may be found in the dialogue 
between the two principals (pages 139-40, 
Brentano's edition), where the wife's romantic 
intention of elopement is squelched by the very 
mention of Candida; the play is humorously 
charged by this would-be Candida as the 
cause of her own foolish notions, her roman- 
ticizing of irregularity. The author laughs 
at those who are not able to catch its real 
drift. 

The domestic triangle is again used, and ro- 
mantic obsessions are satirized in a framework 
of knockabout farce, as Dr. Henderson well 
calls it ; the admirers of " Candida " are warned 
not to be too serious in thesis-seeking in this, or 
any other, drama. Those folk who take " Can- 
dida " in a too esoteric way are good-humoredly 
joked about it and advised that they are " men- 
tally overtaxed " once more. A woman is shown 
loving her husband, as if it were the natural 
thing to do — ^however unexpected. The particu- 
lar fun comes, it should be noticed, from the way 



76 BERNARD SHAW 

the husband takes the lie and the truth: he re- 
sents the truth and wants the lie, and Shaw 
laughs at us because we all do. The lie is the 
illusion that makes living attractive. This is 
definitely Shavian, and the amusing skit must 
be taken in this way and not be regarded as 
a key to the major play, which it certainly is 
not. This conceded, it has its minor place among 
the lighter and brighter stage moods of a many- 
minded and often elusive man. 

You Never Can Tell 

This is one of the cleverest farces, or farce 
comedies, Shaw has written; possibly the best of 
them. Norman Hapgood goes so far as to call 
it the best farce in the tongue. " You Never 
Can Tell " was begun in 1895, the year after 
" Candida " was started, and worked on inter- 
mittently during that year and later; to be first 
produced by The London Stage Society on No- 
vember 24, 1899, the first play of the author to 
be done by that important organization. Shaw 
had Cyril Maude in mind in writing it, and it 
was put in rehearsal by that actor in 1897, but 



" YOU NEVER CAN TELL " 77 

withdrawn. Mr. Maude has given an amusing 
account of this, as has the playwright himself; 
for which the Preface to the play and the Hen- 
derson life may be consulted. In 1900, at The 
Strand Theatre, it was acted with success, which 
is also true of its New York reception, beginning 
at The Garden Theatre in 1905. Prosperity 
has always followed this piece, which is indubita- 
bly a favorite judged by box office standards. 
After the strain and stress of his earlier " un- 
pleasant plays," Shaw seems to have relieved 
himself, while by no means abandoning his 
satiric purpose, by making a series of humorous 
dramas in which the satire, if present, is most 
unbitterly conveyed and the touch that of a true 
stage raconteur. 

Regarded as a work of art, this play ranges 
with the choicest of the Shavian repertory. It 
seems a light bit of fooling, yet is technically so 
excellent and so characteristic in its viewpoint 
and handling as to be idiosyncratic ; above all, 
it is steadily diverting. It ranks with " Can- 
dida," " Captain Brassbound's Conversion," and 
" The Man of Destiny," as examples of the right 
handling of stage material so that amusement re- 



78 BERNARD SHAW 

mains paramount, whatever the underlying sig- 
nificance of the thought. 

Within another conventional framework of 
story, he has placed characters and opinions that 
vivify and arouse. No theme seems outstanding, 
which is one way of saying that no thesis is 
starkly apparent. Yet many of the serious con- 
victions of the writer are embedded in the drama: 
William the waiter suggests social cleavages; 
Gloria, anticipating Ann, the New Woman in con- 
flict with the eternal sex pull; Valentine, an 
earlier Tanner, is pushed against his will or 
judgment into matrimony. The dominant 
thought, I take it, is, that " handsome is as 
handsome does." While the underplot has to do 
with the love affairs of Valentine and Gloria, the 
main tangle involves the events by which Clan- 
don, a husband who has long since turned his 
back upon his family, returns to them, and re- 
ceives at their hands a very frosty reception. 
If you want the perquisites of fatherhood, is 
Shaw's implicit idea, you must, unlike Clandon, 
play the part worthily. Why should a husband 
and father such as this come back and expect 
flowers and affection to greet the prodigal .^^ As 



" YOU NEVER CAN TELL " 79 

a matter of fact, his wife is estranged and his 
children, who have grown up during his absence, 
remember him unpleasantly, dimly, if at all. 
Shaw has his fling here at the romantic assump- 
tion, " once a father always a father," and 
denies that the home is sacred unless you treat 
it sacredly. The genial tone and the corrective 
of constant laughter carry this off effec- 
tively. 

A good example of the author's daring realism 
of detail and setting is seen in his placing of the 
opening act in the dentist's office; surely, a cur- 
tain on a tooth-pulling is a new climax in the 
English theatre ! In technic, the piece is a good 
answer to those who imagine that Shaw lacks 
craft in the playhouse; observe the careful 
preparation of act one for its climax; how wise 
it was not to draw that tooth. How brilliant 
too is the curtain of act four! In contrast with 
acts one and four in this respect, acts two and 
three have psychological curtains, effective in 
their way, but less obvious. The love story 
furnished for those who want it, is tucked into 
these acts, reserving for truly Shavian interests 
the final act, to match the first. 



80 BERNARD SHAW 

The dialogue is a veritable fusillade of wit and 
one laughs constantly with one's brain, if one has 
followed the dramatist's injunction and brought 
it with him! humor, too, of character, situation, 
and word is plentiful. What could be better, for 
instance, than Valentine, earning his first fee for 
six months, and then being invited out to dinner! 
Or, unable to go to the masked ball, because he 
hasn't the price. The pairing off of the part- 
ners in act four is a fine blend of the humor 
that inheres in both character and situa- 
tion. 

Like " Candida," the piece shows Shaw's in- 
sistence upon plasticity of handling at the ex- 
pense of " regularity." The time values seem 
awry again to the superficial glance: act one is 
not the longest nor the last act the shortest. 
But reflection indicates that the business of act 
second is briefly to separate the lovers; and the 
last act, containing the scene a faire, needs more 
time. In other words, the playwright refuses 
once more to be stretched upon the iron bed of 
conventions. His divergences from the usual are 
no violation of essential laws. The careful artist 
is behind them. The characterization of the 



"YOU NEVER CAN TELL" 81 

wise William, surely a masterpiece, is brilliant, 
yet such a person leads to debate. Are such fig- 
ures true, or mere Shavian types? I do not hesi- 
tate to attribute verisimilitude to the wonderful 
waiter, nor does Crampton bother me. The 
women differ; Gloria is perfectly true, her sister 
is not without exaggeration, and the same may 
be said of her brother; together they make a 
most relishable duo of stage figures, if leaning 
toward farce. 

The mother is sound, too. But Valentine ap- 
pears to be more dubious ; he has the earmarks 
that suggest Shaw himself, as has Tanner later: 
apparent light-mindedness, intellectual shame- 
lessness, incorrigible levity; he exhibits the un- 
emotional brain with the soft heart, the usual 
Shavian clash. We are not aware of having met 
him. Yet does he stand for a truth; perhaps he 
will become familiar when the pseudo-romantic 
shall have passed away and we are able to see 
not through a glass darkly, but face to face. 
Let us call such a creation a step toward super- 
man. At present, he is an eccentric, an enjoya- 
ble droll, and — a convenient mouthpiece. There 
is an autobiographic smack to Valentine, as in 



82 BERNARD SHAW 

much of this drama, which but adds to its in- 
terest. For one, I am quite willing to believe 
that the author sees him as verity. 



The Man of Destiny 

This extremely amusing and boldly novel one- 
act piece, written in the autumn of 1895, and 
produced for copyright purposes at Croydon in 
1897, was, as has been stated, given with " How 
He Lied to Her Husband " at The Berkeley 
Lyceum Theatre, New York. It was aimed 
originally at Richard Mansfield and Ellen Terry, 
but these players, perhaps because of the mild re- 
ception accorded " Arms and the Man " and 
" The Devil's Disciple," did not see fit to pro- 
duce it. Before the joint appearance with " How 
He Lied to Her Husband," in 1904, this play 
had been independently given by The American 
Academy of Dramatic Arts at The Empire 
Theatre, New York, February 16, 1899. The 
London premiere was at The Court Theatre, 
June 4, 1907, suspiciously later. Berlin did bet- 
ter, for it was seen there at the Neues Theater, 
February 10, 1904. It may be stated that this 



" THE MAN OF DESTINY " 83 

drama and " Captain Brassbound's Conversion " 
are dramatic compositions in which Shaw did 
not feel his wings clipped by writing for specific 
interpreters. Occasionally he seems to have felt 
that a sharper definition might be given to his 
meaning if it were placed in the hands of able ex- 
ponents whom he had in mind from the begin- 
ning. Maude, Tree, Irving, Mansfield, and Terry 
are distinguished players for whom he shaped his 
material from time to time. His attitude does 
not appear to argue for those dramatists who 
protest that to write for anybody in particular 
(despite the example of Shakspere) is to prosti- 
tute their art. No doubt it is best to choose the 
interpreters, however, for then the impulse is 
from within, an artistic one. It is temperate to 
say that, broadly speaking, drama cut to fit per- 
sonality can be looked upon with suspicion. But 
to make a play and in the process discover that 
some actor would well embody the main character, 
or to have that actor in mind from the begin- 
ning, is quite another thing; and it may be taken 
for granted that this has happened to our play- 
wright in several instances. 

As so often with Shaw's lighter and slighter 



84 BERNARD SHAW 

pieces, " The Man of Destiny " is immensely char- 
acteristic; Shavian all through, in conception 
and details of execution. We may call it but a 
skit, if we choose, and plainly it stands for a less 
sober mood; yet it may be that such a mood is 
the ideal one for literary creation. For amuse- 
ment primarily, as it seems, such a thing has the 
function to make us think, nevertheless, and per- 
forms it none the less surely because there is 
pleasure in its dialogue, characters, and scene 
and the union of them. It is one of several 
dramas of which " Cassar and Cleopatra," " An- 
drocles and the Lion," and " Great Catherine " 
are other titles, where the author blithely pro- 
poses to rewrite history and substitute for 
stock figures out of which the breath of life has 
passed, flesh-and-blood creatures of reality. He 
endeavors to psychologize the events which made 
them genuine personalities, not schoolboy names. 
It is a realist's attempt to get nearer to the 
truth of the Past. 

His own feeling about it is happily and hu- 
morously summed as follows : " A reputation is a 
mask which a man has to wear just as he has to 
wear a coat and trousers: it is a disguise we in- 



"THE MAN OF DESTINY" 85 

sist on as a point of decency. The result is we 
have hardly any portraits of men and women. 
Nobody knows what Dickens was like or what 
Queen Victoria was like, though their wardrobes 
are on record." The conventional picture of 
Napoleon is familiar; instead, we are here shown 
not an historic dummy but a human being 
motivated after the facts of known human reac- 
tion to life. Really to exhibit a humanized Bona- 
parte, in his habit as he lived, would be a service 
rendered to the Natural History of Man, and 
let it be recalled that it is Shaw's general object 
to write that history, by his own statement. In 
this little sketch we see Napoleon as a strong, 
unscrupulous, selfish man, with a distinct dash of 
the histrionic, which makes him play to the gal- 
lery in order to secure an effect of the noble, al- 
truistic, patriotic. He thus stands out as a fig- 
ure to illustrate one of Shaw's favorite doctrines : 
human nature's inclination to mask ruthless 
strength and egoistic singleness of purpose be- 
hind a fine face of Duty. He rather likes Na- 
poleon, since he always likes strength, except 
when the man of politics and war poses as hero. 
This desire of the dramatist that we should have 



86 BERNARD SHAW 

the courage and honesty to call things by their 
right names and not drape our expression of the 
will-to-live with moral tags, outcrops continually 
throughout the plays. The often heard criticism 
that there is no unity or consistency in Shaw's 
writings is exactly the reverse of what may 
truthfully be said: namely, that the author goes 
to the other extreme and too steadily harps upon 
his favorite views, however disguised by fable and 
the manipulation thereof. He is above all things 
coherent and organic in his attitude toward life. 
Novelty in the surface matters of story and set- 
ting have deceived many as to this essential 
unity of thought. 

The acting value of " The Man of Destiny " 
is proved in the playing, but can be detected 
without that test. The tangle of story is ingeni- 
ous, the characters attract, and the climactic 
moment, most cleverly approached, is very effec- 
tive. A definite talent for pictorial and theatric 
details the piece exhibits. The pungent, peculiar 
humor that we savor as of Shaw is abundantly 
in evidence. The significance of the play as a 
vehicle for Shaw's thought may be found in that 
speech of Napoleon almost at the end which de- 



" THE MAN OF DESTINY " 87 

picts the Englishman from a European vantage 
point : 

" There is nothing so bad or so good that 
you will not find Englishmen doing it; but 
you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. 
He does everything on principle. He fights you 
on patriotic principles; he robs you on business 
principles ; he enslaves you on imperial princi- 
ples ; he bullies you on manly principles ; he sup- 
ports his king on loyal principles, and cuts oif 
his king's head on republican principles. His 
watchword is always duty; and he never forgets 
that the nation which lets its duty get on the 
opposite side to its interest is lost." 

The present European struggle might be used 
to embroider the theory set forth in the long 
speech of which I quote the concluding sentences. 
The effectiveness of it comes largely from its 
superb avoidance of qualifiers and extenuations. 

The story used is simple but of strong interest 
in the handling. Valuable letters have been lost 
through the carelessness of one of the officers; 
they have fallen into the hands of a woman ; they 
must be secured. How? The interweaving is SO 
skilful that the tension is happily maintained to 



88 BERNARD SHAW 

the very final curtain fall. Sex relations get 
fresh treatment in the attitude of Napoleon to 
the female spy; their scene quivers with psycho- 
logical subtleties. The woman off stage, the 
General's wife, in her contrast with the woman 
who is seen, is in her influence almost as potent; 
together the two give us Shaw's antithetical 
types. The subsidiary persons of the play are 
also capital : the asinine lieutenant, and Giuseppe, 
the delicious innkeeper. Many of Shaw's ten- 
strikes are to be found in these thumbnail 
sketches of characters, generally mere foils or 
fillers of time and space. Some of his best hu- 
mor, too, comes from their mouths. 

The piece, slight though it be, bristles with 
technical virtues : the whole closing portion of 
the piece after the entrance of the lieutenant is 
an admirable coup de theatre, with a brio that is 
irresistible. The relations of the four dramatis 
personcB are shifted so cunningly that the inter- 
est never flags. 

The fact that " The Man of Destiny " is more 
than twice the length of " How He Lied to Her 
Husband," suggests the plasticity of the one-act 
form, which can in fifteen minutes, twenty, half 



" THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE " 89 

an hour, catch a poignant moment of life and 
with a condensation that is in itself an advantage 
give a cross section of the human show which, 
expanded into an evening, might be less compel- 
ling. 

The Devil's Disciple 

This drama, laid in New England during the 
Revolution, is one of the most typical examples 
of Shaw's genius. It is the first of the three 
" Plays for Puritans," as described by the author. 
It was begun in 1896, completed the next year, 
and produced in early May, at The Bijou Thea- 
tre, Hammersmith; in Bleecker Hall, Albany, in 
October of the same year, Richard Mansfield first 
showed it to the American public. Its London 
production dates September 26, 1899, at The 
Princess of Wales Theatre and under the name of 
" Teufelskerl,'' it was given November 25, 1904, 
at the Berliner Theater in Berlin. 

The Preface conveys a clear idea of the piece, 
which can be regarded as a story, a character 
study, and an interpretation of life. As story 
it is interesting melodrama, psychologized into 



90 BERNARD SHAW 

something rich and strange. Externally, the 
plot especially involves three central persons, a 
husband and wife, and a young man, who, given 
the chance to pass himself oif as the husband and 
so save the other's life, does so, and is about to 
be hung in consequence, when the husband ex- 
plains, and in this way frees him; afterwards be- 
ing pardoned himself, so that a play which might 
have been a tragedy turns out melodramatic 
comedy, and " ends well " for the groundlings. 

The intellectual value of this lies in the 
peculiar motive of the young man in substituting 
for the husband and in his attitude towards the 
wife. As Shaw says, the drama is old-fashioned, 
in that the familiar triangle is again used; in 
the use of a device like the disguise (so much af- 
fected by Shakspere, and recurrent ever since) ; 
and in the obvious situation of the final rescue 
of Dudgeon. 

But as character study and idea it is highly 
original. Dick, the devil's disciple, is set in high 
relief against a background of eighteenth century 
Puritans, who illustrate repressive religion; wit- 
ness their treatment of the child Essie and her 
natural reaction to Dick, who is kind to her. 



*' THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE " 91 

Dick stands for practical, healthy goodness, the 
goodness that does things and enters into red- 
blooded human relations ; his apparent impiety is 
only a sound, honest nature's protest against 
cant, hypocrisy, formal show, and sham. And he 
is capable of the greatest self-sacrifice when a 
test comes. 

Thus he exactly fits in with Shaw's general 
teaching and his ideal of character. Shaw is 
not attacking Puritanism but its abuse, as seen 
in certain unlovely manifestations which exhibit it 
as harsh, cold, negative, external, — husks rather 
than the sweet kernel of truth. In opposition to 
this, Dick Dudgeon is a creature who follows his 
instincts (which are good, notice) and so con- 
nects with the life-force. Conventionally, su- 
perficially viewed, it appears an attack upon 
religion ; it is in reality an attack upon the im- 
moral masking behind a quasi morality. The 
handling of the mother-son relation in its impli- 
cation that this bond must be lived up to if it 
shall be beautiful, sends us back to " You Never 
Can Tell." 

As for its thesis, this play says in effect : " Do 
good, not for reward, whether the Puritan's 



92 BERNARD SHAW 

heaven or another man's wife, but for its own 
sake, because it is the highest impulse and law 
of your nature." Thus we see it to be a con- 
sistent part of the general Shavian view. It may 
be doubted if any large section of mankind would 
act commendably if all selfish emoluments were 
withheld; but here is one man who prefers action 
based upon less crass and worldly reasons. Hu- 
man beings at large may need the golden bait ; not 
so Dudgeon. That is his distinction, that is why 
he is worthily the protagonist in an unusual play. 
Shaw has himself stated that the main persons 
in plays ought not to be average folk but 
geniuses. 

The fun of the thing, and this drama is very 
funny indeed in the situation thus arranged, is to 
be found in the wife and her attitude towards 
Dick. A young and pretty woman, she cannot 
conceive that Dick could have saved her husband 
except for love of her; the bait being illegitimate 
in this case. And the scene in which Dick coolly 
informs her that he does not love her at all, but 
did a good act just to be decent, to gratify an 
impulse of his being in a sudden stress, is a bril- 
liantly novel and amusing theatre stroke; the ob- 



" THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE " 93 

ligatory scene of a play which in its final trial 
scene has further proof of the author's power in 
stage situation. There is in fact much to admire 
in the drama's technic. Despite its oddity, it 
is full of acting values. The part of Dudgeon 
is so original, so contrary to the tradition of 
hero and lover, that when the drama was given 
in London, the impersonator of the role actually 
kissed a tress of the wife's hair at a certain mo- 
ment, that the audience might not be cheated out 
of its time-honored enjoyment; thus, of course, 
coolly ignoring the whole meaning of the play 
and the dramatist's intention as implied in its 
every word. The play is another example of 
new wine in old bottles. It shows us a Nietzschean 
transvaluation of conventional notions of sex 
relations. Daring unusualness of idea and char- 
acters is so manipulated as to please the general 
and particular. Act one, which is a capital illus- 
tration of unconventionality of craftsmanship, 
has for its object to create atmosphere and make 
such a personage as Dudgeon credible ; and this is 
finely done. The action is delayed, for this rea- 
son. When you have so novel a character it be- 
comes unusually important to make it live, give it 



94 BERNARD SHAW 

verisimilitude. As a result of this necessity, the 
story is started later than is usual with most 
plays. It is a mark of finer, more original 
technic to do this ; the playwright is cutting his 
cloth to suit his coat. The technician will note 
the stage value of Dudgeon's first entrance; the 
eff ectivism of the exit, with Judith left in a swoon ; 
the return of the husband; and the handling of 
the court scene: all examples of skilled conduct- 
ment and knowledge of stage resource. The 
conventions are disobeyed in the introduction in 
the last act of a new set of characters; some- 
thing dared by that other disturber of conven- 
tions, Brieux, in the final act of " Maternity." 
In Shaw's case, there is far more justification be- 
cause of the historical nature of the scene, and 
the result is a triumph of theatre effect. 

Not infrequently in Shaw, as we have seen, 
some speech is crucial. This is true of the 
speech (page 59, Brentano's edition) where Dick 
tells Judith why he saved her husband; it was a 
law of his nature to do the unselfish act. 

In the treatment of Burgoyne we note the 
tendency, already seen, to reconstruct historical 
personages. The instinct is to look below the 



" CiESAR AND CLEOPATRA " 95 

surface, below superficial denotements to essen- 
tials, to real psychic facts; in short, to human- 
ize them. Shaw in his Preface declares that the 
drama's novelty lies in the voicing of the new 
thought which is part of the spirit of the Time; 
he implies that it is not his thought in opposition 
to the general view, but he merely reports what 
is in the air, clairvoyantly. His plays as a 
whole may be said to owe part (though by no 
means all) of their significance to this fact; yet 
he is as far as possible from being an echo. His 
voice is his own, but it is enriched with overtones 
that sound the cry of the Zeitgeist, 

CcBsar and Cleopatra 

Another drama which displays the author's 
liking for historical rehabilitation, and one of his 
most enjoyable creations, is " Csesar and Cleo- 
patra," which, written in 1898, was produced for 
copyright purposes at The Theatre Royal, New- 
castle-upon-Tyne, May 15, 1899. Its American 
initial appearance was at The New Amsterdam 
Theatre, New York, October 30, 1906. More 
than a year later, at The Savoy, London, on No- 



96 BERNARD SHAW 

vember 25, 1907, occurred the English premiere. 
The piece was played originally by Sir Johnston 
Forbes Robertson and his wife, Gertrude Elliot, 
and has been a successful number of their reper- 
tory, wherever it has been seen. 

At a first reading of this play, and in com- 
parison with close-knit work like " Candida," 
" Arms and the Man," and " The Devil's Disci- 
ple," it seems a straggling, inorganic composi- 
tion, whatever its merits of detail, and they are 
numerous. To see it acted, modifies the impres- 
sion; the general scenic value, the attraction of 
particular scenes, and the fact that the genre of 
the piece is that of chronicle history, which from 
its nature calls for picturesque, varied, and slow- 
moving treatment, all combine to change the 
judgment. The drama is seen to be an admira- 
ble example of dramaturgy in its kind. Its cen- 
tral significance is that of a character sketch 
wherein a reconstructed personality becomes a 
typical Shavian protagonist, a man after Shaw's 
ideal; presented with humor, satire, and deep 
fetches of philosophy, and, within the envelope of 
story, resulting in a veritable contribution to let- 
ters. Whether we get nearer to the real Caesar, 



" C^SAR AND CLEOPATRA " 97 

we certainly are helped to get nearer to the life 
view of Bernard Shaw, which is quite as much 
worth while. To be offered Csesar as he was, is 
not, strictly speaking, a gift coming most natur- 
ally and gracefully from the maker of literature: 
we look to the historian for that. 

The conception of this mighty captain of the 
ancient world is beautifully in harmony with the 
author's general interpretation of life and men. 
Caesar is known of the world as primarily war- 
rior; this, despite a sad knowledge of him as a 
writer by schoolboys. But Shaw does not ad- 
mire war as settling the claims of human great- 
ness and therefore insists that one of the few 
great men of all time must have been great out- 
side that test and consequently so represents him : 
brave, magnanimous, possessing innate rightness, 
rather than conventional morality, which means 
the outward observance of a code. He is kind, 
unsensual, tolerant, since it is his nature so to 
be. But he is amiably humanized by weakness; 
which is amusingly shown in his attitude towards 
his fifty-two years. Disliking the mere sensual- 
istic picture of his relation to Cleopatra, Shaw 
throws the cold water of his satiric logic on it 



98 BERNARD SHAW ' 

by reminding us of the disparity of their ages; 
and thus pricks the bubble of Shakspere's ro- 
mantic treatment. In Shaw's famous attack on 
the Elizabethan poet, it should be noted that it 
is neither Shakspere's matchless gift for expres- 
sion nor his indubitable cunning as a maker of 
plays which awakens his ire. It is rather his 
limitation of ideas, bound by the limitations of 
his time; and he makes the point that a mod- 
ern dramatist, himself, to illustrate, can be 
" greater " than the earlier man because he has 
the advantage of living at a period when 
thought has advanced and so can begin where 
the sixteenth century left off. In short, a care- 
ful examination will disclose that here as else- 
where it is the intentionally arresting, paradoxi- 
cal, audacious manner of the thought, not the 
thought itself, which is offensive, if any offence 
there be. 

It is altogether possible that the altered Caesar 
of Shaw's brush may be no nearer the truth than 
the Caesar commonly offered; the main thing is 
that Cffisar is vitalized, and is the cause of stimu- 
lating suggestion about human nature. The 
view of Walkley and others that the author is 



" C^SAR AND CLEOPATRA " 99 

incapable of emotionalism hardly bears the test 
of the mystic speech which introduces the leader 
to the Sphinx; this question in its relation to his 
work as a whole, is treated in a later chapter. 

Being a comedy of character in a setting of 
chronicle history, enlivened by episodes and much 
pictorial appeal, we find the play falls into the 
older five-act division; has frequent shifts of 
scene, many persons, massed effects; the familiar 
denotements of suchlike drama. The incidental 
satire is rich and varied; it embraces thrusts at 
war, the military obsession, conventional duty, 
and English art ideals, with a special compliment 
to art for art's sake and the ugliness of com- 
mercialism. The author's position is also pun- 
gently revealed touching revenge and forgiveness. 
There is plenty of the expected humor of the dif- 
ferent sorts suited to the stage. For sheer felic- 
ity of phrase and startling brilliance of thought 
this play is with the few from Shaw's reper- 
tory. 

" But when I return to Rome," says Caesar to 
Cleopatra at one juncture, " I will make laws 
against these extravagances. I will even get the 
laws carried out." And as one smiles with keen 



100 BERNARD SHAW 

appreciation, one recognizes the thorough stu- 
dent of modern governmental methods. It is a 
great temptation to quote when quotation is 
once begun; but the reader is recommended to 
turn to the really great speech (page 194), the 
deliverance on vengeance, with its thesis that war 
breeds war, as having a particularly pertinent 
application at the present time. 

The drama, among other things, for its mean- 
ings are as varied as is its form, might be taken 
as a study of the aging man in relation to 
women; his half-humorous, half-bitter conscious- 
ness that his attraction for them, aside from pub- 
lic reputation, is passing, or past. 

Captain Brassbound's Conversion 

This drama, another proof of versatility, was 
written during 1898' and 1899, after correspond- 
ence with Ellen Terry in 1897. It was produced 
by The London Stage Society, Strand Theatre, 
December 16, 1900, and four days later at The 
Criterion Theatre, London, December 20; its 
New York production dates January 28, 1907, 
at The Empire Theatre. Miss Terry had the 



'' CAPT. BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION " 101 

leading part in the last two productions. Nota- 
ble revivals were made in New York, in 1915 by 
Gertrude Kingston, in 1916 by Grace George. 
Here is a piece of excellent acting valu^ de- 
vised it would appear primarily for amusement, 
yet containing much of the Shavian philosophy 
we are accustomed to look for. Once more a con- 
ventional framework of melodrama is used, but 
within it we are made by means of dialogue and 
character treatment to reflect upon some of the 
fundamental issues of life; that, for example, of 
the relation of kinsfolk, and (recurrent after 
" Caesar and Cleopatra ") the foolishness of re- 
venge. It is not hard to see why the play is good 
stage material. Laid in Morocco, it has scenic 
attraction, much contrast of characters, its in- 
dividual scenes are of the liveliest description, 
and the aspects of life it depicts have the charm 
of exotic unusualness. Moreover, it has a splen- 
did part for the leading player, as Miss Terry 
amply bore witness when she gave it. Nor is the 
leading male part far behind, although it is more 
difficult to envisage its peculiarities. Also, the 
drama has an unquestionable central scene, the 
tense culmination of all that goes before, — that 



102 BERNARD SHAW 

in which Captain Brassbound puts all to the test, 
and reveals his love to Lady Cicely. 

Shaw makes keen but not cruel fun in the 
story of that phase of the conventional romantic 
which awards sainthood to a dead mother, irre- 
spective of the facts, and builds up an attitude 
against others upon the basis of this wrong no- 
tion. In the conductment of the fable he may 
abuse coincidence, but this is unimportant in a 
play of the kind; the shell is fantastic, and it is 
the revolutionary power of the ideas which gives 
it value in any serious sense. The captain has 
taken the traditional view of law and of mother- 
hood; hence he has made his uncle a villain, and 
has deified his mother ; revenge is his ideal motive, 
to it he has dedicated his life, and because of 
it become an outlaw. Contact with Lady Cicely 
teaches him better. The charm of this character 
is beyond dispute; nor is it to be confused with 
the personal appeal of the distinguished player, 
Ellen Terry, who, at fifty-eight, created the 
role, and was a figure of provocative and elu- 
sive delight. But she is quite as truly the 
embodiment of Shavian notions of life and person- 
ality. It is interesting to observe that this fem- 



" CAPT. BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION " 103 

inine character, perhaps the most salient and at- 
tractive in his whole gallery of portraits, is at 
the same time distinctively a type stamped with 
the author's hallmark. With Lady Cicely we see 
will flowering in instinctive acts which are whole- 
some and good because of the sound and sweet 
nature behind them. She is Shaw's answer to 
those critics who declare he is all head : " no, mes- 
sieurs the enemy," we hear him reply ; " not head, 
but will, which involves the emotive nature, and 
the intuitions and impulses, as well." It will be 
instructive to compare this woman with the 
heroines in Mackaye's " Mater," and in several 
Barrie plays, of which one is " What Every 
Woman Knows." They belong to the same 
category, with whatever differences : the woman 
possessing that peculiar feminine charm with wis- 
dom which has in it a sort of whimsical apparent 
disregard of law and order and tradition, which 
refuses to kow-tow to proprieties solemnly 
evolved by man for the protection of society; 
yet who can be safely trusted, in all the vital 
moments of action. And, above all, who is con- 
stantly winsome, doing good without being goody- 
goody. 



104 BERNARD SHAW 

Technically, the drama is especially interesting 
for the way it handles masses and marshals 
events so as to make the characters stand out in 
grateful relief; for note that it is the sort of 
play which tends to draw attention away from 
characterization and fix it upon story. The 
handling of the respective acts is also worth 
study. The first is a good example of exposi- 
tion, the subsidiary persons used for the purpose 
being in themselves enjoyable, and not mere lay 
figures ; the opening conversation of Drinkwater 
and Rankin illustrates a characteristic which 
separates Shaw from all but the best dramatists: 
I mean his ability to make minor figures distinc- 
tive and of value in their own persons. One such 
character as the inimitable little cockney gutter- 
snipe, Drinkwater, would give a play distinction. 
He clings to the mind in much the same way as 
does Silver in Stevenson's " Treasure Island," 
— rascals both, drawn with that tolerant under- 
standing sympathy in which the brain cooper- 
ates with the heart. Act second furnishes the 
external exciting cause, leaving act third for the 
true psychological situation, that is, the conver- 
sion of Brassbound through Lady Cicely's influ- 



" CAPT. BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION" 105 

ence: which is what Shaw^ is after. The second- 
act kidnapping material is divertissement, and 
makes this an amusing stage play for the general. 
The gist of the argument may be found in read- 
ing from page 301 to the end of the play; one 
again detects the author's philosophy plainly an- 
nounced in the Captain's words to Lady Cicely, 
as he tries to explain how it was with him before 
she came: 

" I don't say I was happy in it ; but I wasn't 
unhappy, because I wasn't drifting. I was 
steering a course and had work in hand. Give a 
man health and a course to steer; and he'll never 
stop to trouble about whether he's happy or 
not." The one intolerable thing to Shaw is drift- 
ing; the wastrel type he cannot abide, not be- 
cause it is " wicked," but because it is aimless. 

Sprinkled through the drama is much of the 
incidental wdt, and satire, and the flashlights 
upon Life, which signalize the better efforts of the 
author; the play surely is among his happily 
creative productions. 



106 BERNARD SHAW 

The Admirable Bashville: Or Constancy 
Unrewarded 

This trifle, written in 1902-3, was produced on 
June 7 and 8, by The London Stage Society, at 
The Imperial Theatre, London. Not to be taken 
seriously as drama, it is interesting because it 
was done to escape from the legal technicality 
of stage copyright, a matter but little under- 
stood. The Preface is both amusing and il- 
luminating in giving us the situation. As the 
title states, it is a three-act blank verse render- 
ing of the author's novel, " Cashel Byron's Pro- 
fession," fiction which has proved the nearest to 
popularity of any he has written. He tells us 
frankly he did it to protect his dramatic rights 
in his fiction, since, by the iniquitous English 
copyright laws, anyone could make a stage play 
of the book, unless the author did so first. In 
fact, a dramatization of " Cashel Byron's Pro- 
fession," under that title, was given at Daly's 
Theatre, New York, with James J. Corbett as 
the prizefighter. Shaw in his most characteristic 
style adds that he likes to experiment in blank 
verse, and since he had but a week to do the 



"THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE '* 107 

drama in, he threw it into that form as so much 
easier than prose! 

Then follow several pages of criticism of the 
Elizabethan dramatists which display Shaw, the 
critic, at his most dazzling of iconoclasm; 

At every word a reputation dies. 

And when the smoke clears away, one comes 
to, and realizes that, as usual, truth lurks behind 
Gargantuan exaggeration. 

This little experiment is not to be taken too 
seriously. The picture of a prizefighter spout- 
ing blank verse, and using the stilted thous and 
thees of the elder literature is fun in its way; 
but it is sensible to assume a utilitarian origin 
for the piece and to conclude that it is likely to 
take the boards only as a curiosity. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 

"MAN AND SUPERMAN" TO "GETTING 
MARRIED " 

Man and Superman 

" Man and Superman " has always been reck- 
oned as one of the important plays of Ber- 
nard Shaw, and to some it stands first on the 
list. There is no question that it contains his 
cardinal teaching; moreover, it is one of his 
really brilliant theatre successes, and demon- 
strated his stage gift early in his career. Dr. 
Henderson says it was written during 1903-4, 
but Shaw declares he worked upon it a year or 
so earlier than this. In any case, its first per- 
formance was by The London Stage Society, 
May 21, 1905; and its American production 
dates September 4, of the same year, at The 
Hudson Theatre, New York. This thoroughly 
typical piece, as earnest an exposition of his 

108 



" MAN AND SUPERMAN " 109 

views as he has given the world and only less 
drastic than " Mrs. Warren's Profession," be- 
cause of the nature of its subject and treatment, 
might be baffling if it were the first approach to 
Shaw; read without some previous acquaintance 
with his thought, it would offer many obstacles. 
But those who have followed me in the develop- 
ment of the writer and thinker, will find it beau- 
tifully consistent with the general attitude and 
meaning. 

The main play, omitting the long philosophi- 
cal scene in the third act, which is not given in 
the stage presentation, deals with the way in 
which John Tanner (Shaw under a thin disguise) 
strives to elude Ann, the woman who loves him 
and intends to get him, and does. His flight to 
Europe is useless, and in his heart he recognizes 
he is a fated victim of matrimony, an estate he 
intellectually despises, but as mere man, hankers 
for. In this manipulation of story, the author 
explodes wittily the pretty theory that woman 
is the hunted one, man the hunter. Regarded as 
an organic treatment of plot, the first act, in it- 
self of exceeding interest and great acting value, 
may be criticised as a deflection from the main 



110 BERNARD SHAW 

story; it concerns Violet's apparent violation of 
social conventions and affords Shaw an oppor- 
tunity to let Tanner declaim against what he 
considers the prim negations which fail to see 
that sincere love which results in presenting the 
community with healthy children has much in its 
favor. The justification for the act dramati- 
cally is to be found in the reflection that it is an 
added illustration of the general subject of sex 
relations, a sort of overtone to the central theme 
of the problem of Ann and John. Its cohesion is 
that of thesis: it has intellectual unity with the 
remainder of the play. Violet is another exam- 
ple of the action of the life-force. 

Philosophically, the omitted scene of the 
third act is most important, though dramati- 
cally it is nil. In a long argument is expanded 
the idea that, projecting the influence of Ro- 
mance beyond tlie grave, heaven is the good 
place because the place where reality is attained; 
hell the bad place, albeit attractive, because the 
place where people are still fed upon romantic 
lies, old age, sickness, gross physical facts in 
general, — being removed. Thus, the act is a 
logical extension of his views on Romance, mean- 



"MAN AND SUPERMAN" 111 

ing the falsities which obscure the relations of 
the sexes; here presented, as it were, in terms of 
the eternal. The Preface, to saj nothing of the 
appended Revolutionist's Handbook, must be 
read to get the full handling of the idea. Don 
Juan is Shaw, in viewpoint; while in earlier rep- 
resentations he is a sensualistic cynic, in Shaw's 
hands he is an intellectual one; as the Don Juan 
of Moliere, Byron, Mozart, sees through women 
and so plays with them physically, so Shaw- 
Tanner sees through them in a higher sense and 
satirizes them, although — and this is the humor 
of it, — he yields to their age-old charm, be- 
cause the life-force sweeps him off his feet. It is 
a tribute to Shaw the dramatist to realize that 
this play is of such acceptance in the theatre. 
Here is a composition which is an intellectual 
document beyond cavil, gets its true significance 
from that fact ; but which, after omitting nearly 
a whole act of the written drama, rather an un- 
usual thing to do in contemporary dramaturgy, 
yet remains an acting vehicle at which the care- 
less theatre audience laughs heartily and con- 
stantly. Those who have witnessed it must con- 
cede that in the field of satiric comedy " Man 



112 BERNARD SHAW 

and Superman " furnishes as en joy ably stimulat- 
ing an evening as the latter-day stage can offer. 
Few dramas in stage history create so electrical 
an atmosphere of alert mental exercise. And 
the laughs which ripple over the house are of two 
kinds; the gallery guffaw is there, but also the 
subdued cachinnation of the brain. Straker 
arouses the one, where Tanner arouses the other. 
Whatever unconventionality the drama may be 
said to display, it achieves the two main things 
in the playhouse: it pleases, it makes you think. 
In dialogue, characterization, situation, it is 
masterly. To say it has no " action," is puerile, 
since action in the psychological sense of showing 
us character development through human clash 
and crisis it fairly teems with. This is the sort 
of action desirable in the thoughtful theatre 
of civilization. Ann, Ramsden, Violet, Tavy, 
Straker, Tanner himself, — there is no more strik- 
ing and successful group in modern serious 
comedy. Surely part of the essence of good 
drama which we agree depends so much upon 
clash and crisis in the characters of the play, is 
also dependent upon the dramatist's ability to 
present picturesque and salient contrasts of char- 



"MAN AND SUPERMAN" 113 

acter; and in this respect, Shaw's plays are con- 
spicuous ; moreover, here is one hardly to be sur- 
passed in his repertory. Ann is the conventional, 
proper woman as exponent of the life-force ; Vio- 
let, the unconventional woman (so she appears at 
least) who also expresses the call of the life-force ; 
they are "sisters under the skin," after all. As a 
corrective of the traditional attitude towards the 
" lost " woman, this is a healthy antidote. 

The climax of the second act may be pointed 
to as one of those curtain effects which Shaw 
can command when he chooses to use traditional 
means to such results ; the start of Tanner and 
his chauffeur in the motor in a wild attempt to 
escape Ann, is very funny and as effective as it 
is funny; more original a dozen or more years 
ago than it seems now; for imitators are ever on 
the watch and they have been active since. 

In respect of the argument that woman is 
really the hunter, not man, it may be said to con- 
tain a half truth, at least, with curious justifi- 
cations in biological and anthropological his- 
tory. The dominance of the woman in family 
and tribe in primitive times ; the analogy of the 
bee; the new exhibition of public power dis- 



114 BERNARD SHAW 

played by women today, with the more hidden 
fact of their power behind the throne in all so- 
cial epochs, — these and other considerations can 
be brought to bear upon the dramatist's witty 
use of his idea. His underlying suggestion to 
man, with respect to woman, might be expressed 
as follows: — 

" My dear Sir, you do not know her ; make her 
acquaintance, try to see her as she really is — 
for the good of both." 

John BulVs Other Island 

Written in 1904, this piece was seen at The 
Court Theatre, in London, on November 1, the 
same year, this following its rejection by The 
Irish Literary Theatre for reasons both financial 
and intellectual. It was produced at The Gar- 
rick Theatre, New York, October 10, 1905; and 
was revived at The Kingston Theatre, London, in 
February, 1913. Al! its first appearance it won 
success, artistic and social, and a performance 
was commanded by the king. The political situa- 
tion was such at the time as to make it pertinent. 
In " John Bull's Other Island," Shaw shows as 



"JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND" 115 

plainly as he ever did that he stands for the 
theatre of ideas; for he most evidently turns his 
back on story, and studies types and national 
questions; such drama as there is we must find 
in their contrasts and clashes. 

The framework is of the simplest, and there is 
little real complication. Two friends, an Irish- 
man and an Englishman, go to Ireland; the Eng- 
lishman wins in politics and war against the 
Irishman. Why? Because, says Shaw in effect, 
of the very dunderheaded blunders and genial 
misconceptions which make him English. The 
Irish Larry fails, for the very reason that he 
knows too much, sees through things, is disillu- 
sioned. 

Thus the play stakes its claim to our regard 
fairly and squarely upon its intellectual appeal: 
on characterization, setting, and idea. In these 
respects it is an extremely interesting, suggestive 
example of special pleading; nor should its 
scenic attraction be overlooked, nor its un- 
doubted merits of situation; the capital scene 
with Haffigan in act one, the Nora-Broadbent 
scene at the Tower in act two, the climax in 
which the pig figures as protagonist in act third, 



116 BERNARD SHAW 

and the opening scene of act four, are all good 
drama in their varied ways. But of drama of 
the traditional sort, that which gives us plot 
tangle and progression to the cutting of the knot, 
it is innocent. One's interest does not lie in how 
it is coming out, save as one cares to see a fur- 
ther revelation of the persons involved. In 
sharply contrasted and highly enjoyable figures 
the drama must be placed among the leading 
works of the author. The buoyant, optimistic, 
credulous, and conventional, yet very lovable 
Broadbent; the cool, irritable, clear-witted, disil- 
lusioned Larry; the range of other Irishmen 
from the caddish, bibulous Haffigan, up to the 
superb mystic, Keegan ; Nora, with her faded rus- 
tic gentility, an aroma about her like that of a 
hardy spring flower, so unlike the usual delinea- 
tion of the Irish maiden that we gasp before her ; 
the several varieties of laborers, down to Patsy, 
child of the soil and superstition ; all of them are 
the work of one with a remarkable gift for 
limning human beings who have a knack of get- 
ting themselves seen and remembered. 

As philosophy, the drama is one of the impor- 
tant documents in the case of Shaw vs, his time. 



"JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND" 117 

Here is his definite opinion of the Irish question, 
one of the vital and most complex problems of 
the day. We Americans are necessarily a little 
at arm's length on this ; its natural difficulties 
are not bettered by having the sundering seas be- 
tween us, nor is light thrown helpfully by the 
Irish-American, as we see him. But by reading 
the play and the little book which is dubbed, " A 
Preface for Politicians," we may at least get a 
clear notion of what Shaw thinks. He believes 
Ireland can only be satisfied by Home Rule be- 
cause it is a natural right, rather than because 
its establishment will of necessity work out a bet- 
ter state of things. He holds that Ireland has 
gone wrong because she has substituted dreams 
for the truth. And obviously, here we get the 
steady Shavian attitude applied to a particular 
theme. The Englishman indulges in bursts of 
ideality, romanticism, but always as an agreeable 
aside, not for a moment to be taken seriously nor 
allowed to interfere with his real business. There 
is the difference, the reason he wins. 

As usual in the plays at large, various other 
representative notions are vented: his view of the 
treatment of animals, for example; Keegan has 



118 BERNARD SHAW 

a St. Francis tenderness towards the ass and the 
grasshopper; he pays his compliments to militar- 
ism ; and, returning to the mood of " The Man of 
Destiny," Shaw draws for us with a pen dipped 
in gall his idea of the typical Britisher. (I refer 
to the Preface, pp. 38-9.) The reason that 
Shaw is anything but a pessimist is, that he al- 
ways believes things will be meliorated, and more- 
over offers a modus operandi, namely, socialism; 
we may take it or leave it, as we will; there it 
is, all explained, his way out of the woods. 
Those who are fond of calling him pessimist, are 
deafened by his continual vociferation about the 
things that are wrong; and so do not hear the 
constructive part of his message. 

That part of the Preface devoted to a descrip- 
tion and arraignment of the Denshawai Horror, 
as a piece of satiric invective deserves to stand 
beside Stevenson's " Letter to Father Damien." 
It is a wonderfully eloquent bit of English prose. 
We also have beautifully expressed, at the play's 
end, Shaw's political, or politico-religious ideal 
in the mystic speech of Father Keegan. It is a 
clear example of the spiritual conception of so- 
ciety which Shaw treasures. 



" PASSION, POISON, PETRIFACTION " I19 

Passioriy Poison, and Petrifaction 

Or, to give it the full title, " Passion, Poison, 
and Petrifaction, or The Fatal Gazogene, An 
Extravaganza." This bit of burlesque nonsense 
in the author's most rollicking mood of high 
jinks was written in 1905, and produced on 
July 14 of that year, in a booth in Hyde Park, 
London, by Cyril Maude, for whom it was done; 
the occasion being a fair for the benefit of the 
Actors' Orphanage. It may be read with joy for 
what it is : a piece of fooling by a man whose 
serious moods are sufficiently frequent and who 
believes that the Roman writer was right in say- 
ing that it is wise to be silly at the fitting time. 
Nothing is funnier about this production, which 
is not likely to be put into his final and definitive 
works, than the fact of its origin in a true 
story told by the author to the children of Wil- 
liam Archer. It concerned a cat who by mis- 
take lapped up a saucer of plaster of paris in- 
stead of milk, and thereupon became petrified, 
and was used to prop against a recalcitrant 
door! It is a comment on the vogue of Shaw to 
know that even this trifle-of-occasion has been 



120 BERNARD SHAW 

produced with praise and taken seriously in 
Vienna ! 

Major Barbara 

Also in 1905 was written and produced 
another of the abler and more distinctive plays : 
"Major Barbara," which had its first night at 
The Court Theatre, London, November 28. For 
some years it was not ranked among the prac- 
tically successful dramas of Shaw, but the first 
American production of the play by Miss Grace 
George at The Playhouse, New York, during the 
season of 1915-6, justifies the opinion that it will 
eventually take its place with real stage favor- 
ites, as it certainly will as a brilliant example of 
the Shavian style, skill, and interpretation. Its 
failure to make an immediate strong appeal can 
be explained. The play has been called " a dis- 
cussion in three acts," and this criticism gives 
the reason. In a later chapter I take up the 
general question of the place of dialogue drama, 
and its legitimacy; let it suffice here to say that 
in " Major Barbara " plot is not the main thing, 
idea being paramount, and characters as ex- 
pository of idea. If the play be static, it is so 



"MAJOR BARBARA" 121 

only in the sense of story progression; em- 
phatically, it develops as to characters and 
theme. In that sense, it is truly progressive, 
and has what might be called the logic of con- 
struction. It possesses the highest unity of all, 
the unity of idea; not material order so much, as 
what M. Hamon calls " ordonnance intellectuel." 
Thus, it is not " dramatic," as that word is 
usually understood. And it is probable that for 
some time to come most Anglo-Saxons will sit 
puzzled, uneasy, if not repelled before a play 
where the clash of ideas furnishes the struggle 
instead of some trick of complication. 

As to story, the play is centrally concerned 
with the changed attitude brought about in 
Major Barbara, of the Salvation Army, by the 
acts and arguments of her father, Mr. Under- 
shaft, millionaire maker of destructive weapons 
of war; she is made to see that this great re- 
ligious movement, which preaches poverty as a 
virtue, cannot exist without money, and that 
poverty is the prime social sin. She is converted 
to her father's factory and will marry her lover, 
as she frankly tells him, because he consents to 
enter the works and help make explosives; 



122 BERNARD SHAW 

thereby carrying the logic of destruction to its 
extreme, helping to exterminate war in the end. 
The interest here, or main interest, ignoring the 
side plot of the relation of Barbara's sister 
Sarah and Lomax, is in watching how her father's 
daughter comes to see his point of view, and in- 
cidentally to secure a husband ; and the second is 
entirely subordinate to the first. 

What does the drama aim to do? This is a 
question it is always well to ask before deciding 
what it does. Does it purpose primarily to give 
a picture of a people's religion, and show its 
wrong attitude towards poverty and the place of 
money in this world? The depiction of Salva- 
tionism, be it noted, is not hostile, nor unfair; 
full justice is done to the splendid work for the 
submerged tenth wrought by the organization. 
But it looks ^s if Shaw were looking more 
broadly beyond this specific activity or using it 
in order to discuss and ventilate the tremendous 
problems of poverty and crime, in their relation 
to capitalism and all that word implies. The un- 
employed, the proletariat, and the rich by so- 
called tainted money, are in the purview. To 
make a drama out of such material these large 



"MAJOR BARBARA" 123 

issues must be connected in some way with a nar- 
rower personal complication ; Barbara's person- 
ality and fate offer this to some extent, but per- 
haps not sufficiently to make the chief interest. 
Plot, in other words, is less to the fore than in 
such plays as " Candida," " Arms and the Man," 
and " The Devil's Disciple." Concede this, and 
strong claims to a popular appeal may be made 
for the piece. Its acting value is surprising. 

We are shown a family in its interrelations: 
two daughters engaged to be married; a wife 
estranged from her husband; one daughter at 
outs with her father; a son who is recalcitrant. 
But the tangle does not center in the readjust- 
ment of any of these relations. On the contrary, 
these relations are used to show their respective 
points of view, and to compare three of them: 
the Barbara view, the Undershaft view, and the 
view of society. The major conflict is between 
Barbara and her father. But which view wins.'' 
This is important, for, according to the estab- 
lished superiority of one of them, is the inten- 
tion of the author revealed, his argument il- 
lustrated. Frankly, the answer is not so easy. 
Barbara's view can hardly be called victorious, 



124 BERNARD SHAW 

for she shifts her position through the influence 
of her father; she comes to see that the Salva- 
tion Army must use capitalist money, and not 
talk nonsense about poverty as a virtue. The 
mother, representing society, is not victor, be- 
cause she is only partially reconciled with her 
husband. If any one's logic of life is established, 
it is Undershaf t's ; although he modifies his atti- 
tude sufficiently to convince his family, he con- 
quers, after all, for the rest practically accept 
his position: his wife in her liking of the gun- 
works, when she visits them, and in her yielding 
her children to his employment; Barbara, be- 
cause she adapts her work spiritually to what 
her father has taught her. Undershaft wins, 
money talks, the man who invents killing ma- 
chines is cock of the walk. The conflict between 
Barbara and Undershaft as types, or embodi- 
ments of view, — that is the play in essence, its 
deepest dramatic cause for being. But granting 
this idea, in the light of the writer's teaching in 
general there is puzzle. As usual, we find Shaw 
facing facts, as they seem to him, whether pleas- 
ant or not. The Salvation Army must take 
" tainted " money, since, if traced to its source. 



"MAJOR BARBARA" 125 

most money will be found to be " tainted." The 
Undershaft type of man in modern society is re- 
spected, prized, awarded the prizes. He is of the 
race of the Gatlings, Colts, Krupps, Nobels. It 
were hypocrisy to deny this. 

And what of money, Shakspere's " saint seduc- 
ing gold " ? Is it the root of all evil ? Shaw 
would reverse the idea, declaring it the root of 
all good and the state resulting from its absence, 
poverty, t6 be the arch social sin, as I have said. 
Socially, and that is always the touchstone for 
Shaw, this might be accepted without qualifica- 
tion. Money, regarded as stored-up labor, is 
indeed the prime requisite for progress and a ra- 
tional social life. Why, then, does one have an 
uneasy feeling that there is something wrong in 
the argument of Major Barbara? Something 
seemingly at variance with Shaw's recognized 
position on war and sympathy with the under 
dog in the social struggle? Possibly because 
there is such a strong smack of the Nietzschean 
overman about Undershaft. One rebels at his 
denial of kindness, love, and the rest of the 
Christian virtues, knowing how often they are ex- 
ercised and commended by Shaw. Nor is it quite 



12(5 BERNARD SHAW 

an escape from the difficulty if we say that 
Undershaft is not Shaw, but a dramatically ob- 
jectified viewpoint. Again, we know our Shaw 
too well. The trouble arises, I believe, in the 
mixture of two views: the social and the in- 
dividual, a blend also to be found in " Man and 
Superman." To put it more plainly, when Ber- 
nard Shaw is offering a social panacea, his angle 
of vision is different from what it is when he is 
studying a character. He might not, for in- 
stance, approve of the application of Under- 
shaft's convictions to society at large; but he 
cannot for the life of him keep from liking the 
maker of explosives as a man; since he is strong, 
sincere, looks facts in the face, states them 
courageously, though they run counter to the ac- 
cepted polite ideas, and is economically a boon to 
the community iji his model business organism ; 
one who believes and illustrates that intelligently 
organized industry is at the bottom of social 
progress. All this is heartily harmonious with 
the Shavian doctrine. 

But if this explanation be entirely correct, it 
still remains likely that the drama as a whole 
will in some respects baffle even the thoughtful 



" MAJOR BARBARA " 127 

follower, and still more the impatient public 
which takes its theatre on the run. At times, 
there is an effect of making a point strongly at 
the expense of other points. But as to that, it 
is Shaw's way. 

Technically, the play has exceptional scenic 
values. The first act alone strikingly supports 
this statement. For characterization flowering 
in fit and happy dialogue, it is also notable; m 
the latter particular, the author has hardly ex- 
celled it in any other piece from his pen. The 
opening exposition with its so-rapid tempo, the 
curtain effect of the off-stage music in act one, 
and the tension secured by the powder shed in 
act third will interest all who are watchful for 
technical achievements in the playhouse. If 
Lady Cicely be Shaw's most winsome heroine, 
Barbara is, I verily believe, his finest. In her we 
see a noble specimen of the author's ideal of 
womanly possibilities in the modern social set- 
ting; she evokes Wordsworth's description: 

" / saw her upon nearer view 
A Spirit, yet a Woman too. 



128 BERNARD SHAW 

A perfect Woman, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort and command; 
And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel-light.^^ 

Barbara has depth, breadth, and height; she 
thinks strongly, feels sensitively, and hitches 
her wagon to a star. But she has the fourth di- 
mension too, — charm. Her femininity is not 
lost in strength, practicality, or professional 
moral purpose. She is real, yet an ideal; can 
character creation further go? Barbara is a 
very solid and fine achievement in dramatic 
realization. The climax of her teaching is to do 
right for its own sake, without bribes ; and her 
high words come forth from her woman's mouth 
with a thrilling insistence: 

" I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have 
got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work 
be done for its own sake; the work he had to 
create us to do because it cannot be done except 
by living men and women." 

One feels instinctively that Emerson would 
have liked that. 



"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 129 

The Doctor's Dilemma 

This powerful and in many ways debatable 
drama was penned in the summer and autumn of 
1906, produced at The Court Theatre, London, 
November 20 of the same year, at the Deutsches 
Theater, Berlin, in 1908, and not seen in the 
United States until the season of 1914-5, the 
date being March 29, and the place Wallack's 
Theatre., Granville Barker making the play a 
leading feature of his successful New York sea- 
son. From the first the drama was sharply 
criticized, its supposed attack upon or showing 
up of the medical profession naturally awaken- 
ing indignant protest and opposition. 

It was attacked both as art and life. As art, 
because it was said to be undramatic in texture 
and fantastically improbable in subject-matter; 
as life because, so its opponents declared, it was 
an unwarranted and absurd onslaught upon the 
healing clan. 

It is illuminating to know that the theme of 
the piece was suggested by an incident observed 
by the author; the doctor's dilemma was taken 
direct from life, since a physician actually had 



ISO BERNARD SHAW 

to make a choice between giving a hospital bed 
to a gifted but morally contemptible person or 
to another who, of excellent character, was not 
a genius. To frame this stimulating query, 
which is really a casuistical question, Shaw 
shows us the menage Dubedat: the lovely wife 
devoted to her erring, fascinating husband, be- 
lieving in him blindly; the artist himself, deb- 
onair, living by the esthetic ideal, and quite im- 
pervious to the common notions of marital and 
financial honor ; and the doctor who must choose 
whether to save this brilliant rascal at the ex- 
pense of his worthy but commonplace doctor 
friend; the problem being further very much 
complicated through the additional fact that 
said physician loves Dubedat's spouse, and so 
has a selfish reason for wishing him removed. 

As a conception, it may be seen this is first- 
class dramatic material. But does the nature of 
the subject debar it from artistic handling? 
And more, does the particular way in which 
Shaw handles it result in bad art.? To hear this 
drama played is to realize that it contains some 
of the finest things in all his play-making: yet, 
also, to be baffled by details of treatment and 



"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 131 

perhaps offended by them. Shaw breaks conven- 
tional rules here, but in doing so is as far as pos- 
sible from being dull or mal-expert. As a stage 
story, " The Doctor's Dilemma " is much su- 
perior to " John Bull's Other Island " and 
" Major Barbara." Growth, suspense, climax, 
are all supplied and cleverly manipulated. The 
characterization of the group of doctors is re- 
markable for differentiation into types, each dis- 
tinct as he is amusing and suggestive. In com- 
plete contrast is the study of the esthete hus- 
band, whose credo is UArt pour VArt; he alone 
would remove the play from the category of the 
commonplace. He is a wonderful picture of a 
kind of human being whom we must recognize as 
existing and to be reckoned with. Shaw's por- 
trait is as true and penetrating as anything in 
print concerning the irresponsible Bohemian and 
nowhere does the dramatist show himself more 
the artist than in drawing him ; for he abhors the 
type represented by Louis, all his instincts and 
habits being against it ; yet as a dramatist he so 
objectifies the treatment as to create in the 
death scene a deep sympathy for the artist who 
dies true to his ideals as he sees them. A plucky 



132 BERNARD SHAW 

Pagan gets justice from a reformatory Puritan! 
This scene, it seems to me, is the one to point to 
when it is claimed that Shaw's figures are always 
Shaw. There is no more striking proof of his 
power and of its unusual quality. 

Hardly less fine for portraiture is the wife in 
her adoring trust, her blindness to Louis's true 
nature. How superb the irony of her idealiza- 
tion of him after his death. She is an exquisitely 
right piece of drawing; there is a suggestion at 
the end that she hits closest to the truth about 
her husband, after all. The psychology of these 
two is profound and moving. We get from it 
a sense of the complex nature of human beings 
and the difficulty of deciding in questions of 
character; and with it, the suggestion that it is 
creation's way to take imperfect vessels and use 
them for high purposes, the common water of 
humanity is poured into the Holy Grail of the 
spirit, and so converted into mystic wine. 

Dramatically, intellectually, we have Bernard 
Shaw at his best: wit, humor, satire, pathos, 
philosophy, are embodied in a dramatic coil. 
The ending has been objected to as an unsatis- 
factorily flippant way to close the treatment; 



"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 133 

the tag line, " then it was disinterested murder," 
being too obviously a theatre trick. But it 
seems to me this is more than a coup; it is 
not only a clever line coming out of the situa- 
tion, but also one natural to Dr. Ridgeon, who 
speaks it, while it throws light on the plot. 
Ridgeon, being in love with Louis's wife, allowed 
this to obscure for him the ethical issue. The 
moment the wife reveals to him that she has mar- 
ried again, her " my husband ! " makes the 
spiritual test clear to him, and his declaration of 
" disinterested murder " is a flashlight on his 
mental processes, justifying him to himself. It 
is theatre effectivism used in the cause of sound 
psychology and a high purpose. 

But what of the main intention, the showing 
up of the medical profession? To begin with, 
we must concede that the way of doing it is the 
now familiar Shavian method of overemphasis 
for the sake of making the point. Hit the nail, 
hit it hard and ringingly, and never mind the 
surrounding wood! To get his meaning, we 
must, as we have seen, grant this method to 
Shaw. It is a concession to a temperament — call 
it Celtic, if that helps, — which believes too in- 



134 BERNARD SHAW 

tensely not to get heated by its own move- 
ment. 

With this understood, there is much of truth 
in the picture. To put it scholastically, if there 
be suppressio veri here, there is no expressio falsi; 
and the unconscious suppression of truth, though 
misleading, is not vicious. More than half a cen- 
tury ago in America, a physician who also hap- 
pened to have the writing gift. Dr. Holmes, 
pointed out the chicanery and pretense of that 
calling; Shaw does it later and is no whit harder 
on the craft than was " The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table." One has only to read the 
Preface to see that he respects and appreciates 
the noble men who serve man's body; he simply 
draws attention to the profession's dangers as 
now conducted; and suggests state control as a 
remedy, as one might expect the socialist to do. 
Since the play appeared, municipal doctors have 
become a fact in London. The idea is, that to 
make a man's selfish interests unrestrainedly co- 
incide with an easy line of conduct is subjecting 
him to a strain too great to be advisable. A 
physician's view of the argument should not be 
taken exclusively, any more than a soldier's view 



"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA'' 135 

of war; both are too much concerned in the re- 
sult, it is hard for them to be dispassionate. No 
profession fails to find perfectly honest argu- 
ments in its own favor. If you doubt it, talk with 
a brewer. The notion that the state or city 
should regulate medicine is part of the enlight- 
ened thought of our day; it is suggestively 
touched upon in Herrick's novel, " The Healer." 
Shaw admires the individual doctor immensely, 
but feels that no profession should be sub- 
jected to such temptation; it is the system 
that is arraigned. We hear the publicist 
speaking. 

The absurdities of materia medica have shifted 
since Dr. Holmes held forth at their expense, al- 
though the solemn pretense of Latin prescrip- 
tions is still with us ; Shaw attacks what is cur- 
rent, and with ungloved fists. Most of us have 
become more or less disillusioned at the mistakes 
which go under the name of science; yet most of 
us also cling to the fact that the trained physi- 
cian is a man of science where we are laymen, and 
a very helpful one in time of trouble. But 
Shaw has his fun at the mistakes. The modern 
medic sniiFs at blood-letting but perhaps makes a 



136 BERNARD SHAW 

fetish of blood pressure; he urges the once for- 
bidden fresh air upon pneumonia patients. 
Cereals are a fad in one decade to be described 
as only fit for animals in the next. The diagnosis 
of one specialist is absolutely denied by another. 
Half of our friends are alive because they went 
about their business and thrived after the doom- 
promising prognosis of some high-priced leech. 
It is small wonder that Christian Science has 
flourished. There is ground enough in these 
things to enable a satirist to walk with a firm 
tread. Yet it would seem as if Shaw went alto- 
gether too far when he scorns vaccination and 
all its works. His mystic streak certainly be- 
comes tyrannously prominent when he will have 
none of the germ theory of disease. His most 
definite condemnation of vivisection is contained 
in this drama and its illuminating introduction. 
Here, the matter is more debatable, of course. 
The writer's passionate hatred of the taking of 
brute life and his vegetarian habit come into 
the reckoning. The fine moral ring of the atti- 
tude, whether right or wrong, wins respect. 
Ethically, it is hard to rebut the argument that 
it is a wrong way to eliminate disease, (conceding 



''THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 137 

that vivisection produces that result, which Shaw 
denies), to behave dishonorably toward our fel- 
low creatures, the animals. With the rapid ad- 
vance of modern thought it is becoming a some- 
what rococo use of the intellect to declare that 
since the brutes have no souls and no future, we 
have a right to torture them in the alleged inter- 
ests of science. 

There seems to be at times an almost mediasval 
rejection of the achievements of modern science 
in Shaw, a fairly astonishing thing, coming from 
one who in some ways is so hardheadedly con- 
temporaneous. But looking aside from the 
mystic strain referred to, it may also be said that 
we get here not so much the rejection of science 
as a protest against the absurdly hasty claims 
to scientific accurac}^ and finality in an empirical 
field, where too often pseudo-science goes strut- 
ting as final truth. The induction in this vast 
and changing field of knowledge is still incom- 
plete. Nor is this to deny the marvelous ad- 
vances, especially in the domain of surgery. 
Nevertheless, it may well be that just now we are 
a little taken with Bacteria; if the B. B. way of 
using opsonin seem farcical, it is only stage en- 



138 BERNARD SHAW 

largement of the truth, like the relation of 
caricature to the human face. 

In this drama, then, improbable as to incident 
and intrigue though it may be, there is impres- 
sive psychological truth, and the verities of char- 
acter are not tampered with. The curious scene 
of the artist's death reveals the author in his 
strength, but also in a weakness which is the de- 
fect of his quality. He attempts what is well-nigh 
impossible — in the playhouse. He treats a death 
with the mingled pathos and sardonic humor 
doubtless juxtaposed occasionally by the vast 
indifference of Nature, since she is a lady who 
manifests a total lack of the sense of humor her- 
self. But that life does this, is no sure certificate 
for art ; and wonderful as this scene is, it remains 
questionable, because of its failure to be sen- 
sitively aware that some things should not be 
placed together. There is an element of resent- 
ful pain when the gravity of death and the 
levity of man are sharply set side by side; such 
violent fellowship gives one an odd sense of un- 
fitness. The continence of art is not quite con- 
served, one feels. Perhaps this is why so original 
a play, and one of decided acting value, has not 



" INTERLUDE AT THE PLAYHOUSE " 139 

been liked so well as many others. It should be 
borne in mind that the death was inserted on a 
challenge from Mr. A. B. Walkley, who meant it 
as a charge of limitation; he believed Shaw's art 
wavered before a fundamental crisis of life. In 
short, the scene was written as a vindication and 
partakes of the nature of a tour de force. Yet 
when all is said, it remains, in its strange, half- 
fascinating, half-repellent way, one of the most 
powerful and compelling pieces of dramatic writ- 
ing in a generation. The fact that the story is 
hardly started in the first act is no fault in 
" The Doctor's Dilemma," since the object is to 
give a full-length series of portraits and create 
the proper atmosphere in which the story is later 
to breathe and have its being. We have seen 
the same first-act treatment in " The Devil's 
Disciple." 

The Interlude at The Playhouse 

This was written for Cyril Maude at the 
opening of his new theatre, The Playhouse, 
January 28, 1907, and was published in The 
Daily Mail of London the next day. It served 



140 BERNARD SHAW 

as Prologue to introduce the main piece, " Tod- 
dles," and showed the wife of a manager pleading 
to the audience in behalf of her husband who is 
embarrassed at having to make a speech. It is 
a sparkling bit and not without its point in hint- 
ing the differentiating advantages of sex. 



Getting Married 

Whatever its appeal as play, " Getting Mar- 
ried " is one of the more important items in 
Shaw's catalogue judged for its intellectual sig- 
nificance. It was written in 1908, and first pro- 
duced at The Hajmarket, London, May 12, 
1908. The drama is preceded by a long Preface, 
one of the most elaborate he has sent forth, and 
a thoroughly characteristic effort for keenness, 
wit, and whimsical indulgence in paradox and 
overstatement. The play itself is a discussion in 
one scene and a continuous performance (with 
the author's consent, it was performed with two 
intermissions) of a social problem of vital im- 
port. The form chosen is of interest in view of 
the author's reference to it as an experimental 
extended use of the one-act drama. The fact 



" GETTING MARRIED " 141 

that Shaw selected such a mould indicates the 
nature of the play; a single situation presented 
without conventional plot development, for the 
sake of exhibiting the reactions of character in 
a crisis which illustrates an argument. The 
writer desires to show the confused and to him 
ridiculous condition of the present marriage laws 
and ideals; and to that end, marshals a number 
of couples who stand for the main varieties of 
the workings of such: a young pair who are go- 
ing into marriage without realizing its limita- 
tions and are checked at the threshold by one of 
its many absurdities ; a high-class old maid and 
uxorious bachelor; a typical menage a trois in 
Leo, Regy, and Hotchkiss ; a typical celibate, 
Soames; an example in the bishop and his spouse 
of a couple well along in life who have weathered 
the storms, and incline to take things as they 
are ; a much married man, Collins ; and, most 
original of all this piquant assemblage of the 
matrimonially entangled, Mrs. George, the May- 
oress, who with Hotchkiss seems to suggest 
the frequent irregularities which exist beneath 
the apparent smug respectability of the usual 
union. 



142 BERNARD SHAW 

By bringing together this group, so remark- 
able for contrast and saliency, and by brilhant 
dialogue and arresting scene, Shaw keeps us in- 
terested and amused while he rams home his 
views. There is a central interest in the ques- 
tion whether Edith and her man will or will 
not get themselves married; the play has its 
dramatic validity just there. And an effect of 
climax is secured when they finally take the mat- 
ter into their own hands and have, not the pub- 
lic ceremony that all had planned, but a pri- 
vate one. It is not a fair statement to say that 
the play lacks entirely in growth and story at- 
traction. A juster way to put it would be to say 
that its thesis is plainly exposed and its method 
that of character caught in a crucial situation, 
rather than carried along by plot. Given its 
purpose, the technic is sound; that it will never 
be as popular as other dramas from this hand 
is pretty safe to guess; the nature of both 
theme and handling forbids it. With an unusual 
aim, the dramatist chose an unusual method to 
put his ideas before an audience; there was no 
lack of skill about it; wilfully Shaw adopted his 
procedure here. The play contains plenty of 



" GETTING MARRIED " US 

proof of craftsmanship. Observe, for one little 
instance, the careful manner in which the final 
appearance of Mrs. George is prepared for, 
" planted " as the phrase goes, by Collins' talk 
about her on the first page. This preparation is 
one of the sure tests of a genuine dramatist and 
the tyro constantly overlooks it. 

But the idea and argument claim attention. 
The play stands or falls by its intellectual inter- 
est. It is a play of ideas, or it is nothing. 

However elaborate the development of the 
thought, the author's position is clear. To him, 
the present marriage laws are bad, and the solu- 
tion is easy divorce: there it is, stated in a sin- 
gle sentence, and as a thought sufficiently shock- 
ing to many. Some think we shall get rid of 
marriage entirely, projecting their dream far 
ahead in time. Not so Shaw. By precept and 
example, he shows we must practically, and for 
the present, preserve the institution; that the 
thing to do is to improve, not abolish it. All 
statements that his aim is to destroy rather than 
modify, are based on a failure to read and under- 
stand his words. 

But there remain several reasons why the play 



144 BERNARD SHAW 

may awaken opposition. First, the levity of the 
prevailing tone; this, of course, being typical of 
the writer. The composition becomes the more 
amusing by this lightness of touch and hence bet- 
ter drama; but in so serious a matter, the fun 
may get in the way of the underlying earnest in- 
tention, always a likely happening with our 
author. 

Then, there is the unpleasantness of the plain 
speaking. If we are to avoid the unpleasant in 
a dramatist who declares he can and should no 
more dodge giving pain than a dentist, then adieu 
Shaw. Another probable drawback is the de- 
tachment of the argument from sentiment: the 
sentiment which naturally and properly gathers 
about the union of two people who love each 
other. There are times when our sensibilities are 
jarred so that we wince. It is the old conflict: a 
warm-hearted, sentimentally inclined man trying 
to separate head and heart, because he believes it 
the only way to see clear on a vital question. 
And we must be willing to be made uncomfortable 
with him. 

But is his contention true? The query pierces 
to the root of the matter. Allowing for the 



" GETTING MARRIED " 145 

Shavian method of perfervid rhetoric, overstate- 
ment for vividness' sake, the picture of the 
wrongs now existing in the marriage relation is 
not unfairly drawn. Logically, too, the remedy 
suggested, that of easy divorce, upon the com- 
plaint of either party to the contract for what- 
ever cause, is plausible. The defect in the reason- 
ing lies in the assumption of human nature as 
commonly trustworthy in the premises. 

It would work beautifully with Shaw and his 
kind of normal, right-minded folk, who have the 
high ideals of matrimony which are based upon 
the sound belief that love alone justifies such 
union. But how would it work, by and large? 

For example: suppose a man and woman 
could get a divorce for the asking. If one of 
them were a light person, he or she would in re- 
sponse to a whim or because of a penchant for 
somebody else, secure liberty. Follow that per- 
son and see what happens. It is a little difficult 
to imagine a wise conservation of the interests 
of the child in such cases. The idea of the open 
door removing the feeling of prison is sound. 
And, let it be repeated, the fundamental thought 
of a right union is nothing but admirable. If 



146 BERNARD SHAW 

only poor human nature could be relied upon to 
live up to it ! An ideal, properly viewed, is 
something not yet attained, but conceivably at- 
tainable; perhaps Shaw's idea (an idea is an 
ideal that has arrived) would work as well as, 
even better than, the present chaotic fumbling 
towards readjustment. So far, there is not so 
much a plan as a welter. With existent preju- 
dices, the Shaw plan is not likely to be tried. 
Meanwhile, we can respect a theory which aims 
so high, and has such a conception of humanity. 
There are passages in this drama which reveal 
Shaw in some of his most effective and character- 
istic phases. His sense of poetry is finely 
brought out in the clairvoyant speech of Mrs. 
George. And the argument in the Preface that 
woman's political enfranchisement would materi- 
ally assist her in the married relation, not only 
affords a clear idea of his feeling about suffrage 
(fortified later in "Press Cuttings"), but offers 
a suggestion to the workers in that cause which 
is distinctly valuable. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 

"THE SHOWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET " 
TO "THE MUSIC CURE" 

The Showing-up of Blanco Posnet 

Written in 1909, and finished in March of 
that year, " The Showing-up of Blanco Pos- 
net," another of the author's characteristic 
pieces, was produced at The Abbey Theatre in 
Dublin, August 25, 1909, and was played by the 
Irish Players in America, during the season of 
1911-2, as well as later. It was given by The 
Stage Society in London after its Dublin pre- 
miere, technically outside the law, for it had 
been censored by the Lord Chamberlain; it was 
afterwards licensed by that dignitary on condi- 
tions so absurd as to preclude the possibility of 
performance, as may be read at the close of the 
Preface to the printed play. 

This moving drama, which is likely to be reck- 
147 



148 BERNARD SHAW 

oned with steadily as one of the books thoroughly 
expressive of the author's thought, is interesting 
in both form and substance. It is in that one- 
act mould which is so often used in the later 
work of Shaw as to suggest that he finds it con- 
veniently plastic to his mature purposes. It is 
also unique among his works in having the United 
States for locale, although early America was 
used in "The Devil's Disciple." So little does 
the author apparently care for that superficial 
accuracy which is the end of unimaginative 
" realists," that he has been anything but actual 
in his picture of Bret Harte types in their west- 
ern habitat. Surely, if Shaw had sought an ef- 
fect of " truth " in the external sense, he would 
not have had his cowboys address each other as 
" old son " ; and would have set his scene right in 
various other particulars of speech or furniture. 
It almost seems as if he purposely exhibited in- 
difference in such details, in order to remind the 
reader, or auditor, that the higher truth is there ; 
drawing attention to what he is after. For it is 
there, beyond debate; he has never done human 
beings with more convincing psychology, and 
never has spiritual truth shone more flamingly 



" BLANCO POSNET " 149 

through the supposedly opaque medium of west- 
ern " bad men." 

Yet this superficial " untruth " is such as to 
repel some critics ; Professor Edward Everett 
Hale, for one. It might be argued that, in a work 
of art, to dispel the illusion by inartistic details, 
which destroy verisimilitude, is a sin against that 
spirit of truth which must lie behind the desired 
result of conviction. " Conviction of sin " is 
what Shaw is after in this piece. Be that as it 
may, an irresistible breath of spiritual reality, I 
feel, blows out from this rough and ready depic- 
tion of primitive folk. The spirit of good which 
is in common man was never brought out by 
Shaw more forcefully and touchingly. 

With the true instinct of a dramatist aware 
that a one-act piece must center on the obli- 
gatory scene which is at the heart of any good 
play, Shaw presents his story in terms of the 
tense trial picture which is the climax of all that 
has gone before; here his method is that of Ib- 
sen. The characterization is clear, varied, con- 
vincing; pictorially, there is great value in the 
court room with its fringe of eager toughs sur- 
rounding Blanco and the jury, broken in upon 



150 BERNARD SHAW 

by the women who change the complexion of the 
case. The " boys " constitute a sort of crude 
Greek chorus, and the individualized figures of 
the sheriff, the Elder, Feemy, Blanco himself, 
stand out in high relief. The exposition, though 
very direct, is plausible and skilful. The general 
atmosphere of a primitive community ruled by 
the fundamenal principles that make human in- 
tercourse possible under any conditions, — " re- 
venge is a wild kind of justice," says Bacon, — is 
capitally caught. For stage effectiveness, the 
piece must be placed high up in the Shaw reper- 
tory; the Irish Players were not altogether 
suited to it, and full justice awaits it in the 
hands of a skilful American company. No exam- 
ple of his craft affords a better chance to study 
growth and increase of tension; note how the 
seeming climax is put off by the arrival of later 
witnesses, to make the final effect the greater. 
In external form, it is frank melodrama, with the 
traditional good ending: Shaw again pouring new 
wine into the old bottles. But melodrama as it 
is, it is also a psychologic study of which the 
theme is the dealings of God with a human soul. 
The conception of religion and of God here 



"BLANCO POSNET" 151 

makes one think of Bunyan, and the Salvation 
Army! Blanco wants to be wicked, finds he can- 
not; he prefers the company of bad people, and 
is afraid to be alone, because a good person, 
God, will get at him. He has a vision, like Saul 
of Tarsus. The play is a clear justification of 
Chesterton's remark that Shaw is a Puritan; 
not only in his desire to deal with moral prob- 
lems and reform his fellow-men, but in his con- 
ception of the relation of deity to dust. The 
play is a close companion to " The Devil's Disci- 
ple," in its insistence on doing good for its own 
sake, without ulterior motive or reward. Poor 
Blanco, in fact, is puzzled by the kind of heav- 
enly trick which has been plaj^ed upon him; in 
sharp contrast with him, doing right in spite of 
himself and for mystic, unworldly reasons, is set 
the elder, with his " other worldliness," as George 
Eliot has acutely called it. It is the idea of man 
caught in Stevenson's phrase, " we are doomed to 
some nobility " ; Blanco does not wish to be no- 
ble, but is obscurely pushed in that direction by 
a power greater than himself, dumbly trusted by 
this western " tough." 

The picture of Blanco realizing that there 



152 BERNARD SHAW 

are two games being played by him (and by all 
of us), the devil's game and God's, to use the 
old-fashioned theologic nomenclature, is painted 
with broad, effective strokes, in a way to make 
the final scene with his culminating speech as fine 
a thing as the author has ever given us, and cer- 
tainly one of the moments in his dramatic writ- 
ing when we come very close to the essential 
thinker and teacher. If he is ever serious, it is 
here; if there is a passage anywhere in his works 
in which Shaw's social sympathy and his ideal- 
istic faith in the life-force is plainly stated, it 
is when Blanco Posnet harangues those rough 
miners who are somewhat dazed to find the man 
they are about to acquit of a death penalty sud- 
denly turning their judge and bringing them to 
the court, not of Judge Lynch, but of eternal 
justice. The drsunatic value of his words at 
such a moment in such a setting, needs only to 
be heard to be felt. It is one of a half dozen 
pronunciamentos of the author wherein we get 
close to his inmost thought, and conviction and 
hear the very heart-beats of his meaning. The 
passage appears later in this book. 

The play has added importance because of the 



*' PRESS CUTTINGS" 153 

acute analysis in the Preface of the censorship, 
with all its weakness and opportunity for work- 
ing harm. Shaw gives us a fine plea for liberty in 
Art ; it belongs to the lineage of Milton's " Areop- 
ag-itica." The writer shows himself a democrat 
in his willingness to trust the judgment of the 
people rather than that of any official: a posi- 
tion which may easily be turned against him 
if we come to consider his belief in Socialism 
with its inevitable use of the same officialism. 
But in its setting here, it is full of an eloquent 
cogency; the grotesque spectacle of plays like 
" Mrs. Warren's Profession " and " The Showing- 
up of Blanco Posnet," to say nothing of " Press 
Cuttings," being debarred from licensed hearing 
in a land that smiles complacently over the un- 
draped vulgarity and indecency of the average 
burlesque and musical comedy, offers full oppor- 
tunity for the satirist, and the chance is taken. 

Press Cuttings 

This scintillant example of Shaw's lighter 
touch and mood was presented by The Civic and 
Dramatic Guild at the Royal Court Theatre, 



154. BERNARD SHAW 

London, July 9, 1909, having been composed 
during March and April of that year. It was 
stopped because of political references, and given 
with slight changes September 27, at Man- 
chester. It shows the author at his best in the 
one-act form, which lends itself especially to topi- 
cal treatment with the desired point and brevity. 
It is wide of the mark to describe it (it has been 
so described) as an anti-suffragist screed; it does 
not give the impression of /or, or against. Not 
a polemic, but a work of art, it makes unbitter, 
non-partisan fun of vulnerable points in the 
armor of either movement as it exposes itself to 
the satirist. It would certainly be very difficult 
to detect a bias in Shaw in his depiction of Mrs. 
Banger and Lady Corinthia, antis ; in making 
sport of them, he indirectly might be said to 
praise their opponents. With a wider vision, he 
looks beyond either party to find his amusement 
in human nature, as such. He refuses to let us 
catch him napping. At the end, we find him on 
the side lines, amiably looking on at the battle 
and enjoying all the fruits of neutrality. He 
has had his dig at masculine women, at women 
who use the sex-pull for political purposes, at 



"PRESS CUTTINGS" 155 

men who flatter themselves they rule, when woman 
is really the power behind their potherings ; and 
back of these satiric flings, the larger questions 
of war and peace, militarism, and the economic 
and political relations of the individual to gov- 
ernment, are hit off in a way to make jocoseria 
carry an aftertaste of thought. Mrs. Farrell 
(another minor character looming large) is as 
masterly as she is womanly, to be placed for suc- 
cess, given the lesser scale, beside William in 
" You Never Can Tell." Her humorsome com- 
parison between killing men in war and making 
them again in childbed, with woman paying the 
damages, is unforgettable. 

For sheer good-hearted fun, for sparkling dia- 
logue from the mouths of immensely enjoyable 
persons, Shaw has never been happier. " Press 
Cuttings " is a success in its kind. It sets up 
as an avowed aim to secure merriment out of 
the comic possibilities of current events and 
personages : leaders like Asquith and Kitchener, 
the thin disguise of whose names cheats nobody 
out of the pleasure of recognition. It hardly 
needs be said that the genial use for literary 
purposes of a distinguished figure like the late 



156 BERNARD SHAW 

Earl Kitchener must be related to the fact that 
the play was written some years before his death. 
It is thoughtful burlesque, which seems a new 
genre, and the thought is there. There is much 
of the Shavian in Mitchener's final remark to 
Balsquith : 

" The moral for you is, you've got to give up 
treating women as angels." We at once find the 
author expressing a general attitude. It may be 
emphasized that there is a pairing off of the cou- 
ples in conclusion, as in " Man and Superman " ; 
again, Shaw is frankly conceding the great pur- 
poses of Nature, let him (or another) scoff or 
carp as he will. 

Shaw's sense of stage effects is shown in 
Balsquith's entrance disguised as a woman; noth- 
ing could be better theatrically ; and the tele- 
phone talk of Mrs. Farrell with her daughter is 
so good as to condone the use of that overworked 
instrument. Seven years ago, when the play was 
written, the advantages of the telephone as first 
aid to the dramatist had not been so freely ex- 
ploited. So true is it that this admirable little 
piece is not a suffragist manifesto nor in any 
sense a propagandist effort, that it might better 



"MISALLIANCE" 157 

be described as a satire on politics in relation to 
the military question, the woman question natur- 
ally coming into the discussion. Give the army 
civil rights and the women votes, says the orderly, 
which appears to be very much the author's no- 
tion also. It should not be overlooked that the 
title with its implied origin of the play in the 
dail}'^ press is a part of the satire of this keen 
and brilliant presentation of current social issues. 

Misalliance 

In the contention that Shaw's plays are not 
plays at all (meaning that some of them lack the 
familiar play physiognomy), this one-act piece 
might be used as a test case. Strictly, it isn't 
drama as that word is traditionally used; for it 
lacks story, direction toward climax, growth, 
climax itself, and conclusion. And yet, reading 
it, we are confronted with the paradox that it is 
intensely interesting. Why? Here again one is 
puzzled by the question whether anything on the 
stage in the form of scene, dialogue, and action 
by human beings, that holds the amused atten- 
tion of an audience, is not properly to be defined 
as a play. 



158 BERNARD SHAW 

" Misalliance " was written during 1909-10, and 
produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London, 
February 23 of the latter year. It has not up 
to the present writing been done professionally 
in America. The author calls it " a debate in 
one sitting," and a facetious chronicler at the 
time of its debut declared that the debating so- 
ciety is found in a lunatic asylum where, without 
motion or chairman, the members argue aim- 
lessly and during this irresponsible talk the 
Shavian tenets respecting love, marriage, and 
the duty of parents and children, especially the 
former, are electrically set forth. It is true 
enough that the people gathered together at 
the country residence of John Tarleton, rich 
manufacturer of Tarleton Underwear, are not 
ordinary folk; one fairly gasps at their utter- 
ances, so far are they away from the convention- 
alized patter of the stage: the obvious replies to 
obvious questions proponed by obvious types of 
human beings. The elder Tarleton himself, his 
son Johnny, Lord Summerhays, distinguished ad- 
ministrator just home from India; his son, the 
delightful Bentley, whose pet name of Bunny is 
a revelation of his personality; Hypatia, Tarle- 



" MISALLIANCE " 159 

ton's daughter, engaged to Bentley; her mother, 
old-fashioned and shrewd, and the ancillary char- 
acters who surround these central persons and 
help to solve the main business of mating the 
girl of the house, — such as these are not met 
every day, in the theatre or in life. One asks if 
they exist, outside the fertile brain of their 
creator, very much as one asked it of the char- 
acters of Charles Dickens. This can never be 
decided as a question of science can be; the per- 
sonal equation will settle it at the last. Why 
be too greatly concerned as to whether the Tarle- 
ton menage can be duplicated from life? They 
are monstrously amusing, these folk, the words 
they speak are as mentally arousing as can be 
found in any stage dialogue of our time; and in- 
cidentally, Shaw is enabled to vent many ideas on 
domestic life and the education of and in the 
home, which are seriously held by him ; a fact the 
farcical method of the piece should not for a mo- 
ment blind us to. 

But does a definite thesis emerge from all this 
brilliancy of epigram and thrust of whimsical 
argument? Hardly, in the way of dramatic con- 
cision and steady cleaving to one thing. But, 



160 BERNARD SHAW 

plainly enough, I think, the notion that the life- 
force, sadly interfered with by the silly conven- 
tions of domestic upbringing, will seek its own, is 
stated and illustrated in Hypatia's turning from 
the little Bunny, with brains and no physique, to 
the athletic Percival, who biologically is so much 
more her suitable mate. We hear Shaw again 
saying, as in " Man and Superman," that argue 
and refine as we may. Nature will act and over- 
throw our plans. I believe this to be after all 
the sufficiently centralizing theme or purpose of 
a play which should not so much be described as 
wanting a story as not choosing to make the 
usual dramatic use of story that is there. How- 
ever such a drama may act, it is a highly enjoya- 
ble bit of literature, and when a thoughtful 
theatre audience is homogeneously ready for it, 
likely to be welcome in the repertory. 

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 

Written in the same year with the foregoing, 
1910, it was also produced at The Haymarket 
Theatre, London, on November 24, 1910, Gran- 
ville Barker playing Shakspere. The subject was 



*'THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS" l6l 

eminently fitting, inasmuch as it was done on 
the occasion of a benefit for the proposed Shak- 
spere National Memorial Theatre. It therefore 
aims to show the master dramatist as the crier- 
up of this project. We get a characterization 
of the poet as novel as it is amusing, and in 
agreement with Shaw's well-known critical re- 
marks about the elder playwright. It is a study 
of the literary type which recognizes alike its 
weakness and strength; we observe the note-book 
method of getting good lines and valuable hints 
from wayfaring folk the bard may meet; the 
putting of letters before life ; the quick sus- 
ceptibility of the artist to the call of sex; the 
bold matching of his power as a king of words 
against Elizabeth as queen of men; and under- 
neath all the badinage, an earnest desire to 
make the sovereign realize the educational value 
and significance of the playhouse. To declare 
that this is taking unwarrantable liberty with the 
stock ideas of the poet is nonsense; what do we 
really know of this Elizabethan Englishman? 
The imputed qualities bring us nearer to the 
man, which is enough. The scene shows the poet 
keeping an appointment by night with the dark 



162 BERNARD SHAW 

lady on a terrace at Whitehall, and meeting the 
Queen instead, with whom he boldly talks. 

The language of the period is cleverly caught, 
and there is special piquancy in the thoroughly 
modern view couched in such words as these: 
" For this writing of plays is a great matter, 
forming as it does the minds and affections of 
men in such sort that whatsoever they see done 
in show on the stage, they will presently be do- 
ing in earnest in the world, which is but a larger 
stage." 

The scenic effectiveness and the crisp handling 
of the conclusion add much to the general acting 
value of this excellent example of Shaw's lighter 
manner. It may without hesitation be set down 
among his successes. 

Fanny'' s First Play 

At a time when it was beginning to be said 
that Shaw had lost his vogue, this drama rein- 
stated the dramatist in the favor of average 
playgoers. Moreover, he proved his power to in- 
terest the light-minded public by the intrinsic 
appeal of his work rather than by the at- 



"FANNY'S FIRST PLAY" 163 

traction of his name, for this play, written 
in 1910-11, appeared anonymously at The Cri- 
terion Theatre, London, April 18, 1911, and 
ran for nearly a year, when it was transferred 
to The Little Theatre, then to The Kingsway, 
for a further run; and on being given at The 
Comedy Theatre, New York, September 16, 1912, 
held the stage there for a season. In the face of 
these facts, it would seem untenable to argue 
that Shaw has become less effective as dramatist 
as he has matured as thinker. His most popular 
drama did not have the advantage of his reputa- 
tion to start it; and this play is also one of his 
latest. It hits nearer the truth to say that while 
by no means all of Shaw's plays succeed in the 
popular sense (who is the dramatist able to 
make such a boast?), yet at any period of his 
career he is capable of a stage success ; his more 
serious thinking, if it can be called such, has not 
dulled his cleverness, has indeed but lent body to 
increased expertness. The external history of 
his dramatic development is all against the as- 
sumption that like Tolstoy, for example, ethics 
and intellect have injured art. In fact, again 
and again, Shaw has turned from some serious 



164. BERNARD SHAW 

and strenuous dramatic debate to furnish the 
contemporary stage with capital light entertain- 
ment: as in the play under consideration, or the 
later " Androcles and the Lion." 

Certainly " Fanny's First Play " is not one of 
the author's most important, most intellectual 
dramas, but it does not fail to offer an underly- 
ing satirico-social idea and the stimulation to the 
brain that is derived from an examination of 
modern theories. 

To make the thing more arresting and original, 
there is an induction and epilogue, after the 
elder fashion; a young girl is to have her piece 
performed and we are allowed to witness the pri- 
vate showing; and afterwards to hear the critical 
comment upon it; leading critics, Walkley, 
Archer, and others, appear on the stage and dis- 
cuss the play's "merits, which affords the author 
a chance to poke fun at critical vagaries, and 
contains the suggestion that as there is no agree- 
ment, the principle of non disputandum holding 
here as elsewhere, there can be nothing authorita- 
tive or final in such judgments. 

The story itself veils a satiric attack on smug, 
middle-class Philistine morality. Partners in 



" FANNY'S FIRST PLAY " 165 

business whose families are in close friendship 
have respectively a son and daughter whom they 
intend to make a match of it. But both disap- 
pear, go off on a lark, escape from their cell like 
the monk of Siberia. Margaret, the girl (played 
in London by Lillah McCarthy), fired with an in- 
nocent desire to see life, visits a Salvation Army 
hall, goes to the promenade of a theatre, and 
then to a dance, and falls in with a young 
Frenchman who steers her around to see the 
sights. Their larkishness lands her in jail. 
Bobby, the son, associates himself with an in- 
souciant young female of the name of Dora, and 
her influence lands him in prison, too. The fun 
consists in seeing them come home to shock their 
families; and to hear them confess to each other, 
each supposing the fault to have been exclusive. 
When they discover they do not love, they very 
happily pair off, Margaret with the stately but- 
ler whom she secretly admires and who turns out 
to be a duke ; and Bobby with " darling Dora," 
with whom he finds himself perfectly congenial. 
Again, it would appear, the life-force disturbing 
human plans! Regarded as fact, a realistic 
treatment of life, this play obviously runs into 



166 BERNARD SHAW 

extravaganza, which no doubt is one reason for 
its success: the two marriages, for instance, are 
improbable, if not impossible. But as usual, the 
underlying seriousness is to be found in the study 
of middle-class ideas of propriety, the failure to 
realize what the younger generation are and need. 
Both Bobby and Margaret suffer from suppressed 
natural instincts. Their comparatively innocent 
and harmless night-off would in real life result, 
the author would say to us, in tragic happenings. 
In other words, here is drama to be enjoyed for 
the sheer fun of the thing, yet which observes the 
Shavian principle in that it is, unobtrusively in 
this case, a drama of idea. 

The characterization is full of flavor and car- 
ried through with an unflagging zest: the re- 
ligious Mrs. Knox, the self-satisfied, placid Mrs. 
Gibney; the butler-earl, whose manners as the 
former justify his being the latter; the French- 
man, humorously introduced for the sake of of- 
fering an outside coign of vantage from which to 
comment upon this group of Britishers; Dora, 
with her wayward charm and the good that 
is in her in the way of affection, and hon- 
est comradeship; the fathers of the family, too, 



"ANDROCLES AND THE LION" 167 

alike in the hidebound respectability which is 
their fetish; to say nothing of the princi- 
pals themselves, especially Margaret, whom 
you feel to be an excellent example of the 
type of young person who in this milieu is likely 
to be misunderstood. It is all sound psychology. 
That is Shaw's way: solid truth about human 
beings within a more or less fanciful framework 
of story. The framework is to catch gulls 
withal; the character drawing is for the honora- 
ble minority. He elects as his business the in- 
ner truth of psychology instead of the outer 
truth of plot. 

Androcles and the Lion 

The year 1912 seems to have been one of un- 
usual literary activity with Mr. Shaw, for three 
plays are dated from it in the latest volume to 
appear in the American edition of his works. 
The first in order is " Androcles and the Lion," 
which was translated into German by the Viennese 
journalist, Siegfried Trebitsch, played in Berlin 
before it was in English, and produced in Lon- 
don by Granville Barker and Lillah McCarthy, 



168 BERNARD SHAW 

at The St. James Theatre, September 1, 1913, 
and in America by Mr. Barker, at Wallack's, on 
January 22, 1915. It has already proved itself 
to be one of the genuinely effective Shaw dramas 
in the theatre. This is probably because, while 
not without many of the author's more serious 
earmarks in the way of satiric idea and scenic 
investiture, it is or has the eifect of being a story 
play, to be enjoyed by the majority of theatre- 
goers in whatever country. Its novelty of form 
and subject-matter also conduces to this result. 
In the Preface to the printed play, one of Shaw's 
most extended and carefully wrought argumenta- 
tive brochures, and sufficiently daring to arouse 
attention and contention, the writer shows more 
plainly than did his drama (a common thing with 
him, and stamping him as so much the better 
playwright) how much there is behind the piece 
in his thought. The essay of well over a hun- 
dred close-packed pages sets forth Shaw's thesis 
that no modern nation has as yet accepted and 
put into practice the social doctrines of Jesus, 
which, he believes, would, if accepted, give hap- 
pier results than have been attained from any 
other theory of society and state. It is a de- 



"ANDROCLES AND THE LION" 169 

fense of the teachings of the founder of Christian- 
ity from a quarter least to be expected by those 
who think of the writer as a destructive force 
flaring out against conventional religion. I 
doubt if a piece of writing ever came from Mr. 
Shaw's pen to surpass this Preface and the lit- 
tle postscript at the play's end, in sheer literary 
force; it is extraordinary for crisp concision 
and a kind of inevitability of felicitous phrasing. 
The clinch of such a sentence as this, coming in 
its cumulative place after what goes before, can- 
not fail to be noted by any one sensitive to the 
uses of English : " From which I conclude that 
a popular pulpit may be as perilous to a man's 
soul as an imperial throne." 

The author makes plain in his Preface, if it 
were needed to do so, that his drama, a curious 
mixture of fable, chronicle history, and extrava- 
ganza, is not a study of the early Christians and 
Roman civilization, but of the martyr type and 
the persecutor type as such, wherever found; 
these particular types being illustratively made 
use of. No depiction of the subject was ever 
more removed from bias or parti pris. Grant 
that Shaw gets fun out of both Christian and 



170 BERNARD SHAW 

Pagan, he has no purpose to ridicule either, save 
as all humanity is laughable, as well as pathetic, 
tragic, and inspiring, when viewed by a true 
satirist. He shows us that a Caesar is very much 
what his environment makes him, for good or 
bad; that not all are Christians in the deeper 
sense who so call themselves, witness a Ferrovius, 
a Lavinia, and a Spintho, — of a truth, religion 
m^kes strange bedfellows, — and that the famous 
cruelties of Rome at this juncture were simply 
the regular reaction of the conventionalist to ec- 
centric persons at large. Thus, in a drama 
fairly uproarious in its opportunities for amuse- 
ment, there is, for those willing to look beneath 
the laugh, some of the cogent thinking which it 
is the writer's sly way to pass to us when we are 
off guard, along with the more obvious merriment 
of which he is prodigal. 

" Androcles and the Lion " coruscates with 
palpable theatre effects of the most alluring sort. 
The opening scene in which by way of prologue, 
and embroidering the old tale, the man tames 
the beast, is as convulsing an example of Shaw's 
broad humor as can be named. The arena 
scenes are brilliantly of stage value; and that 



"ANDROCLES AND THE LION" 171 

in which the imperial monarch, mere man now 
in his terror, is chased by the lion, is even 
more overcoming to the risibles than the initial 
appearance of the brute. The characterization 
is as varied and salient as could be wished: 
a striking study in contrasts and yet brought 
under the common denominator of human nature. 
I am sorry for any one who does not see a deep 
pathos in the seemingly weak, henpecked hus- 
band of the shrewish Megaera, who, by the way, 
is packed full of irradiating meanings upon fam- 
ily life and its relations. Androcles, with his 
gentle sweetness, his rather dazed desire for the 
use of loving-kindness, is, seen to the center of 
him, a very touching portraiture, and Shaw at 
his best. The final exit of Tommy the lion and 
his friend, a man whose loving-kindness is not 
arbitrarily limited by the line between brute and 
human, contains the lines spoken by Androcles: 

" Whilst we stand together, no cage for 
you ; no slavery for me." 

It is an idealist reminding us that liberty is 
one, and if it be a principle worth applying, it 
cannot be for sporadic application. 



172 BERNARD SHAW 

A plot in the strict sense may be denied to this 
favorable specimen of the author's maturer art. 
Androcles, along with a number of Christian 
martyrs, is in the Roman arena awaiting his turn 
to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. He is saved 
by the lion from whose foot he has extracted the 
thorn. Such complications as arise are due to 
the different ways in which the Christians take 
their fate, the interactions of prisoners and cap- 
tors, and, above all, to the disturbing presence 
of the king of beasts. There is an excellent 
climax in the rescue of Androcles by his supposed 
destroyer, suddenly changed to friend for a rea- 
son cannily understood by the theatre audience, 
after the prologue's preparation, but highly mys- 
tifying to the persons of the play, — a truly 
right handling of story for theatre purposes. 
The story is quite sufficient for the style of play 
in which it is used, and the leisurely movement 
and full pausing for individual effects of scene 
and character exposition are deliberately adopted 
by the playwright, rather than a tenser handling 
of material in a drama of skilful tangle and 
emphasis upon suspense. Again we get thought- 
ful burlesque, extravaganza, farce, or all of them, 



" OVERRULED " 173 

as j'ou will. Farce, it can hardly be called, when 
so much care and serious intention are put into 
character portrayal. 

The form into which " Androcles and the 
Lion " is thrown offers still another example of 
Shaw's free hand in moulding his material. The 
prologue is followed by two acts only, the act- 
ing time as a result falling under the conven- 
tional demands of a full evening's entertainment, 
so that a forepiece is properly given with it. 
But this did not prevent the dramatist from say- 
ing all he had to say within more prescribed 
limits and stopping when he was through, — one 
of the eternal difficulties of literature! 



Overruled 

This one-act piece was written in 1912, and 
produced at The Duke of York's Theatre, in 
London, October 14, of that year, in a triple bill 
in which the other two plays were contributed by 
Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero. Shaw 
describes it as " a comedy of manners," also as 
" a clinical study." Often in his plays there is 
the suggestion that existent social views reflect 



174 BERNARD SHAW 

back upon married folk and make trouble. Here 
he exhibits a complication arising from such 
pseudo-ideals, treating the situation in a vein of 
light satire. The result is a bit of enjoyable 
fooling, though by no means the writer at his 
best. The note struck is that of " The Philan- 
derer," without that play's more serious tone and 
elaborate handling. 

Two married pairs are shown, and the wife in 
each case talks over her situation with the hus- 
band of the other woman. None of the four is a 
philanderer in the sense that any one of them is 
willing to disturb the peace of a friend's house- 
hold. Yet none of them is true to individual 
duty in the married bond. That is, they respect 
the convention, but do not respect the personal 
faith in the home which is the basis of right do- 
ing. One couple says : " I like this, though I 
oughtn't." In contrast, the second couple says: 
" I want to like this, but I don't, particularly." 

By interesting character relief and contrast 
and through witty, keen dialogue, Shaw satirizes 
the conventional view of such a social contre- 
temps. He shows us plainly his conviction that 
the usual assumptions in the premises are untrue, 



" OVERRULED " 175 

because they do not square with the facts about 
human nature. The two men, and the two 
women as well, are constantly saying what they 
consider proper, according to the social opinion 
that prevails, while they are steadily acting 
otherwise; whether or not they obey the conven- 
tion, the point Shaw makes is, that they set it 
up as right to obey. The treatment is in perfect 
harmony with the author's general view: accept 
human nature for what it is, in planning and con- 
ducting the marriage system, which, being human, 
is necessarily imperfect; do not pretend that hu- 
manity is something other than it is. " I like any 
one to love me," says one of the women. " Of 
course, we all do. Can't we admit that we're hu- 
man, and have done with it? " says Mrs. Juno. 

" Marriage is all very well, but it isn't ro- 
mance," remarks Juno ; which I take to be Shaw 
whimsically suggesting that the mistake is to 
think romance is better. The humor of the 
situation, where each man goes out to dinner 
with the other's wife, depends upon this cheerful, 
open-eyed acceptance of human nature : the frank 
liking by criss-cross, with the removal of sur- 
reptitious guilt, deceit, and the like ; so that it be- 



176 BERNARD SHAW 

comes simply a frank, open pleasure in the so- 
ciety of human beings other than within the 
home; flirting ceases, the relation is innocently 
sexual, but not animal. The flaw here, as else- 
where with Shaw, is to be found in the notion 
that so highly inflammable material as human 
beings would in all cases escape the flames of il- 
licit love. With Shaw, it seems an attitude of 
mind, this theory, rather than a workable thing; 
but as theory, admirable, with a great deal of 
truth in it. 

The title of the play may be taken in the 
technical legal sense : " Overruled, to set aside 
the authority of a decision as a precedent, by 
maintaining a different doctrine in a later case." 

Pygmalion 

Like " Androcles and the Lion," this play 
was first done in Germany, the translation also 
by Herr Trebitsch, being produced at the Les- 
sing Theater, Berlin, in November, 1913. Sir 
Herbert Tree produced it at Her Majesty's 
Theatre, in London, April 18, 1914, and it was 
also first done in New York in German in the sea- 



" PYGMALION " 177 

son of 1913-14, and in the same season by Mrs. 
Patrick Campbell, October 12, at The Park 
Theatre. 

Like " Fanny's First Play," it was a re- 
assurance that Shaw in his prime could pro- 
duce drama of practical stage appeal and story 
interest. Its popularity in several lands has 
been decided. The theme in itself, the general so- 
cial elevation secured to a woman of the people 
by her careful training in speech, under the in- 
fluence of a philologist, whose personal power 
over her is of a kind to suggest love, is not so 
searching or universal as many of the other 
plays. Indeed, to some the idea may appear to 
be far-fetched. The thing to recognize, however, 
is that a first-rate acting drama is the result, the 
whimsical motive proving full of possibilities in 
the hands of Shaw; and moreover, the additional 
fact that the piece does not fail to give us the 
usual overtones: shrewd, penetrating observa- 
tions upon society, and the men and women who 
make it up, in their sex meanings, together with 
sundry scattering reflections which are immedi- 
ately caught as familiar and representative. At 
the center is the satire directed against the pre- 



178 BERNARD SHAW 

tensions and conventions of class. The speech 
of Eliza, the flower girl, at first objectionably 
like her kind and later that of a fine lady, be- 
comes in Shaw's hands a symbol of all the ex- 
ternal, acquired touchstones by which people as- 
sume superiority and grade social distinction. 
The dramatist, with his keenly observant eye, 
sees that it is in the main some superficial ac- 
quisition, — dress, language, deportment, habit of 
life, — that gives a person the social place proudly 
taken as a right ; and he laughs at this, as demo- 
crat and socialist, much as Moliere laughed at 
this or that one of the learned professions. 

Regarded as story, the interest heads up in the 
relation of Eliza to the professor who has made 
her socially, by his ingenious instruction in the 
proper use of the mother tongue. The situation 
is decidedly piquant; one feels that she is greatly 
interested in him, influenced by him, and there is 
a natural question in one's mind: will they 
marry? Somewhat tantalizingly Shaw writes a 
last scene leaving the query in mid-air; the issue 
is ambiguous, for while the action implies that 
Eliza will defiantly go to work for Higgins's rival, 
and she snaps her fingers at her former mas- 



"PYGMALION" 179 

ter, yet there is that in the two characters, and 
in the girl's very tempestuousness of repudiation, 
which breeds the suspicion that at bottom Hig- 
gins is the man she wants, and, after the fashion 
of Ann's grab game, wdll get. Characteristically, 
the author adds to this scene in the printed play 
an explanation from which we learn that this de- 
duction is incorrect; that she marries Freddy, 
the young gentleman who, in the crass idiom of 
today, fell for her from the first. And she makes 
this decision, the author goes on to tell us, not 
that she did not care for the professor, but be- 
cause she instinctively felt that he would not 
make a good husband, was not of the Benedick 
brand, because — a reason truly Shavian in its un- 
expectedness — she had a rival in Higgins's mother, 
to whom this middle-aged, forceful, and woman- 
attracting bachelor was so devoted. The pages 
wherein this theory is propounded and the anxious 
auditor of the play set right, will add much to 
the pleasure from the play, and are rich in social 
suggestion. 

In this drama, Shaw reverts to the old-fash- 
ioned five-act form which we have come to expect 
in modern dramaturgy only in pla3'S of romantic 



180 BERNARD SHAW 

and historical character, where the model would 
traditionally favor it. To give a modern real- 
istic comedy such form seems almost like bravado. 
Probably the best reason to give is that the 
drama worked out that waj^ when it was plotted 
and scene-divided. It is really a four-act play 
with a prologue: for such act one, which shows 
the flower girl in her estate before the meta- 
morphosis under Higgins began, can be seen to 
be. In this opening act, the main characters, 
especially Higgins and the flower girl, are 
limned, and then act second starts the phoneti- 
cal reform, act third shows it triumphant, act 
fourth presents the climax of Eliza's reaction 
and revolt from the cold-hearted experiment 
which has lifted her to the duchess height, only 
to let her fall back into the street ; leaving a final 
act of high tension to clear up the relations of 
the two — and without doing it! Both to the 
lover of story for story's sake and the student of 
human nature, the final situation of. these two 
strangely contrasted folk ofl'ers fascinating 
queries: will they, should they, could they.? And 
the author tantalizes us with a curtain which 
leaves an interrogation mark. The fourth act 



"PYGMALION" 181 

scene of the turn of Eliza upon the man whose 
power she feels yet resents, is very fine drama in- 
deed. Had Shaw been a " romantic," he would, 
of course, have closed the affair by throwing 
the two into each other's arms. But not with 
so consistent an enemy of the customary treat- 
ment of love. Higgins is a Frankenstein who, to 
his astonishment, finds that his own creation, the 
street girl, is likely to turn and rend him. In his 
scientific interest in her as a phonetic problem, 
and his intellectual use of her to prove that 
duchesses can be easily manufactured (ignor- 
ing human interest), he has quite overlooked 
the little matter of Eliza's having a soul. With 
all the differences of subject, treatment, setting, 
and tone, there is a reminder in this situation of 
Ibsen's " When We Dead Awaken," with the 
sculptor also refusing to treat his model as a hu- 
man being and respond to her love. What a fan- 
tastic proposition for a realist's play! To make 
a duchess in six months by reforming the speech 
and deportment of a malleable girl of the people, 
with good looks and natural intelligence ! But 
given the premises, how much of shrewdest so- 
cial wisdom is in it, what a caustic picture of hu- 



182 BERNARD SHAW 

man nature, enlivened by humor and penetrating 
often to the very center of the truth. 

Eliza is a remarkable creation, not needing a 
Mrs. Patrick Campbell to show it, since one gets 
her clearly in the reading. The two men of 
science, Higgins and Pickering, might easily over- 
lap, but yet are perfectly distinct. Higgins him- 
self, though in certain respects he may seem to 
reveal his creator hardly masked behind him, is 
immensely alive, and a type standing squarely on 
his own feet. His mother is delightful, and ac- 
counts for her son's infatuation with her. Freddy, 
as an amiable nobody, is a sketch, but a capital 
one; the Eynsford-Hills, mother and daughter, 
are an acute study of genteel poverty. As for 
Doolittle, he deserves a chapter to himself! No 
doubt he is farcical, or if you insist, impossible. 
But how could we spare his inimitable talk about 
the " deserving poor," the unction of his genial 
blackguardism? As a married man, he is im- 
mortally good fun. One goes back to Dickens for 
his prototype, and does not quite find it, since 
Doolittle is himself and no other. 

In short, in this latest drama to be widely seen 
and read, Shaw is so en joy ably the maker of 



" GREAT CATHERINE " 183 

merriment and keen social satirist as to make it 
temperate to say that his present estate as play- 
wright shows him in his ripest ability. 

Great Catherine 

This is another of the sportive trifles in which 
our author rewrites history. Its date is 1913, 
the same year as " Pygmalion." It is frank 
burlesque, extravaganza that yet contains the 
smile of the mind. That Catherine of Russia was 
anything like the representation of her in this 
one-act piece, can never be settled, since it is ex- 
actly a person behind the public scene of tradi- 
tional report who is pictured. Nor have we the 
interpretive benefit of the usual introduction. 
But it would be a mistake to consider too curi- 
ously in the case of a jeu d'esprit which the 
author describes as " a harmless piece of tom- 
foolery." It is one of those bits of stage fun 
which this serious-minded writer permits himself, 
now and again, perhaps primarily for his own 
relief, and while its tendency to suggest the un- 
conventional values and contours of historical 
characters is undoubtedly an element in Shaw's 



184 BERNARD SHAW 

purpose, it is safer criticism to center the scru- 
tiny of this sportive piece of irresponsibility on 
character, scene, and situation. In no other of 
his plays has Shaw let himself go so far in the 
way of horseplay and broad, some will say, 
coarse comedy, with the single exception of " Pas- 
sion, Poison, and Petrifaction." The thing is a 
veritable riot of physical knockabout, and much 
of its effectiveness is derived from the absurd in- 
congruity of exhibiting personages of high im- 
portance in the sleazy deshabille of truth; it 
would be unpleasantly disillusioning, if we cared 
more for those who are depicted. Catherine, 
whose name comes to us as ominous, retires from 
Shaw's hands as an attractive woman who, like 
Elizabeth, cared for men; and through the 
drunken buffoonery of her minister, Patiomkin, 
emerge the battered outlines of an astute states- 
man, after all. And the comparison between the 
fact of such characters and their figureheads in 
history is so drawn as to produce an amusement 
not altogether unthoughtful. 

The young English officer set bewildered in 
this wild Russian behind-the-scenes farrago of 
psychology, enables the writer to make some of 



"THE MUSIC CURE" 185 

his usual hits at the British type, while plainly 
showing it as quite able to take care of itself in 
the imbroglio. " Great Catherine " may be set be- 
side " Press Cuttings," for its ungloved, exuber- 
ant handling of great names, and its tendency to 
satirize the conventions of character portrayal. 
It makes fun of court life of the past in much 
the same spirit and with much the same intention 
shown by Mark Twain, in his " Connecticut Yan- 
kee at the Court of King Arthur." Its realism 
of method and perhaps in part the nature of the 
theme prevent it from being so marked a success 
as the English satire on present history, more 
commonly called politics. It will not, I imagine, 
be ranked as on a level with " Press Cuttings," 
nor take its place among the happiest achieve- 
ments of the author in the drama of one-act 
form. 



The Music Cure 

This is another topical skit after the manner 
of " Press Cuttings," in one act, containing 
much in the way of political allusions, including 
the Marconi scandal. It was produced at The 



186 BERNARD SHAW 

Little Theatre, London, January 28, 1914, as a 
curtain raiser to Chesterton's " Magic," and has 
not been published, so that a knowledge of it, un- 
less one were so fortunate as to have heard the 
piece, is based upon the newspaper reports. 
Thus indirectly judged, it seems to be one of the 
minor sketches for purposes of fooling primarily, 
and offering relief (to those who seek it) for all 
who find dramas like " Mrs. Warren's Profes- 
sion " and " Man and Superman " too heroic in 
their demands. We get an interior scene which 
shows an Under-Secretary of State much ex- 
hausted by the examination of the Macaroni 
Committee, the Macaroni Company being one in 
which he has invested heavily on hearing that the 
Army is to go on a vegetarian diet. To help him 
recover, his mother has engaged a woman pianist 
to play to him; and the music cure, involving 
both piano and concertina, works so well that the 
lady captures the weary one, the curtain falling 
on the rendition as a duet of " You Made Me 
Love You: I Didn't Want to Do It," — a senti- 
ment recognizably of Shaw, since it might be 
the heraldic device of John Tanner. One can 
understand that this slight framework of fun 



" THE MUSIC CURE " 187 

may contain some genuinely Shavian material, 
though the reviews do not favor this idea. 

At the present writing, Shaw's latest drama, 
by name " O'Flaherty, V. C," has been restrained 
by the authorities in Ireland, where it was the 
intention of The Abbey Theatre to produce it, 
on the ground that it would not be looked on 
with favor in the premises. The British censor 
has no jurisdiction in Ireland, but the objection 
comes from the military not civil authorities. 
Whether this attitude will soon be slackened or 
the conductor of The Abbey Theatre, Mr. 
Ervine, may defy the warnings and let the play 
be seen, is in the lap of the gods. So far, it has 
not been published, save for practical stage and 
copyright purposes; so that no examination of 
the drama can be made for this volume. 

This, then, completes the list of the dramatic 
writings of Bernard Shaw, and the number, 
thirty plays, makes his work generous in quan- 
tity. But quantity, save as it implies a fecund 
mind full of matter to give the world, would not 
be significant, could we not add that in verve, 
variety, literary skill and effect, and pungent 



188 BERNARD SHAW 

stimulative appeal to thought, the work enchains 
attention, rewards study, and affords the pleas- 
ure that belongs to a genuine contribution to 
letters. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 

After this detailed examination of the plays 
in due chronologic order, we may synthesize the 
main points of Shaw's social teaching, his opin- 
ions with regard to men and women in society 
today, and the evils which prevent the free and 
fruitful development of the individual. 

There is room for both the individualistic and 
socialistic ideal in his view. On the one hand, he 
regards it as the highest aim of the state to con- 
serve and foster that deeply personal expression 
of the will to live, and the will to function, which 
shall result, as he believes, in the fullest expan- 
sion of every man and woman. And on the other, 
he conceives it as obligatory upon the state, 
meaning the framework of government which 
should exist alone for its helpfulness in the evolu- 
tion of the individual, so to legislate as to assist 
men and women in this interacting growth and self- 
realization. In a word, the state exists for Man, 
189 



190 BERNARD SHAW 

it has no other reason for being. But, sharply 
diverging from Ibsen at this point, he thinks the 
state is a beneficent means to this end: largely 
wrong, mismanaged, and in the way of progress, 
to be sure; but to be improved, not destroyed. 
Ibsen, both in his plays and in private letters, ex- 
pressed scepticism with regard to the value of 
the state, and was for a clean sweep of removal. 
Shaw prefers to use the present machinery by 
eliminating its defects. Like Mr. H. G. Wells, he 
has faith in the collective mind of society, which 
shall work this betterment, as it gradually (the 
Fabian, we saw, gets his name from his tendency 
to make haste slowly) comes to perceive what is 
wrong in detail and rectifies it by improved laws. 
And again like Wells, he finds that the collective 
mind, which is the mind socialistically inclined, 
must get expression in the few individual minds 
of clear seeing and natural leadership; Wells, 
his own, and suchlike thinkers. The word revolu- 
tionist, in its usual alarming connotation, does 
not belong to him at all. To be sure, in that 
document known as " The Revolutionist's Hand- 
book," one of the most brilliant pieces of polemic 
writing in a generation, he appears with an 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 191 

anarchic flourish calculated to mislead the sim- 
ple. But it is only part of Bernard Shaw's little 
joke with the English language. All you need to 
do is to read him, instead of interpreting him by 
headlines, and you ascertain that the " revolu- 
tionist " in his meaning is " one who desires to 
discard the existing social order and try 
another " ; that the method of so doing may be 
as mild and peaceful as a Fabian program; and 
that, illustratively, a general election in England 
is " revolutionary." In all his writing and think- 
ing, Shaw uses speech as all first-class literary 
persons do, to enforce his thought by an appeal 
to its radical meanings. He differs from such a 
master as Stevenson, for example, in that the lat- 
ter gives us the root flavors of language for the 
pleasure that comes from this fresh, picturesque 
use; whereas Shaw does it primarily for the pur- 
pose of mental shock, and stimulation of the in- 
tellect into thinking. 

When it comes to the particular stripe of so- 
cialism consistently to be found in Shaw's dramas, 
it must be understood in the first place that Ave 
see a man frankly growing before our gaze, and 
honest enough and large enough to make no 



192 BERNARD SHAW 

bones about it. The only consistency which is a 
jewel, as Shaw is well aware, is that which hon- 
estly believes a thing at the moment it is said; 
for there must be organic connection between a 
series of apparently disparate opinions if they be 
strung beadlike upon the cord of a genuine per- 
sonality; beneath all seeming contradictions, is 
the unity of a sincere nature in its course of de- 
velopment. Shaw may begin with Henry George, 
swear by Marx later, and eventually repudiate 
the German and take up with the views of Eng- 
lish economists like Sidney Webb, and yet exhibit 
a beautiful coordination, if we will but accept 
him as changing as he waxes mature, as all real 
thinkers do. 

Recognizing, then, that we begin with this 
maker of many plays when he is a young thinker 
in the formative period of the thirties and follow 
him for over twenty years into the late fifties, 
nor refusing to him, now in his intellectual prime, 
the right to readjust his theories more than once 
in the future, it may be said that Bernard Shaw, 
as at present on view, believes in much more 
state interference with the untutored collective 
will, and with the vicious private will, than now 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 193 

obtains. Certainly he would socialize the means 
of production and exchange by municipal or 
state control, instead of leaving it to private 
initiative and capital. He would have mothers 
pensioned by the state, for example, and doctors 
salaried by the city, and eugenics enforced by 
law, and marriage made more difficult and divorce 
easier by governmental action. And he would 
have men and women given an equal economic 
chance before the law, the latter being recog- 
nized as economic competitors, and wage-earners 
who should receive an equivalent of their wage- 
earning capacity when they elect the role of 
child-bearing and child-rearing. He would have 
the state reach out its long arm and punitively 
seize the smug, respectable citizenry which at- 
tends church regularly but derives an income 
from insanitary slums and houses of ill repute of 
various kinds. 

All this, it will be observed, is state interfer- 
ence with what is so proudly called, especially in 
political campaigns, " the inalienable right of 
the individual." It is a view we Americans are 
somewhat shy of, although we adopt it with de- 
lightful inconsistency here and there in our 



194 BERNARD SHAW 

municipally conducted lighting plants, or pub- 
lic libraries, or by whatever piece of machinery 
we see fit to handle some great utility in the 
interests of the public and without private gain 
as an object. This is Shaw's socialism as we 
find it scattered through his plays and applica- 
ble to this or that aspect of social thought, which 
aims in general to improve the present condi- 
tions of living and bring into closer harmony 
the members of the social organism. He has 
declared that " the only fundamental socialism 
is the socialization of the selective breeding of 
man; in other terms, of human evolution. We 
must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck 
the commonwealth." Then, the inequitable mass- 
ing of wealth in private hands, and the masked 
slavery that is called free labor under present 
conditions, would automatically be taken care of. 
The policy of Fabianism, in his own description, 
is one that is " peaceful, constitutional, moral, 
economical," and needing nothing " for its blood- 
less and benevolent realization but the approval 
of the English people." 

In this conception of the function of the state, 
Shaw sees the family as necessarily central and 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 195 

its integrity essential to the best results. He is 
anything but destructive in his treatment of the 
home as the natural integer of the state; his con- 
clusions here are as conservative as those of a 
typical Mid- Victorian ; only he waxes iconoclastic 
when he considers the methods whereby the fam- 
ily may be better constituted and regulated. A 
short cut to his view, as we saw, may be found in 
reading the Preface to " Getting Married," sup- 
plemented, naturally, by the play itself! All the 
half-baked talk as to the Shavian philosophy be- 
ing subversive of the family and state is either 
intentionally misrepresentative or blandly igno- 
rant of his teaching, or, once again, using his 
convenient phrase, " mentally overtaxed " in the 
attempt to interpret it. Nothing is clearer than 
his position here. He certainly regards the home, 
as at present constituted, as ill-managed in the 
interests of the child, — and the school likewise; 
his underlying objection to both being the repres- 
sive principle which maims and inhibits the free 
personal reaction which alone is life. Even as he 
believes in the selective principle of eugenics to 
get the child born, so he believes in assisting the 
child in its period of growth to self-realization. 



193 BERNARD SHAW 

The introduction to " Misalliance," one of the 
most elaborate he ever penned, gives us a clear 
idea of his notions on the complex and vastly 
misunderstood relations of parents and chil- 
dren. 

Shaw's championship of women consists in his 
open-eyed recognition that they must be an or- 
ganic part of the rightly conducted state, shar- 
ing alike its duties and privileges, and not in the 
present anomalous position with regard to its 
government. He is not a suffragist, as a fixed 
attitude, because he is so much more, and sees so 
plainly that the ballot is but an incidental step, 
though an important one, to full economic par- 
ticipation in social life before the law. In this 
respect, he closely affiliates with Ibsen, who, it 
will be remembered, when asked for an express 
indorsement of their movement by a Suffragist 
club, declined a definite tying up to what in his 
view was an incident in a larger and longer 
struggle, a means to an end. But unquestiona- 
bly, part of the Shavian social vision takes in 
that coming type of woman who is glimpsed as a 
glorified companion of man, joint worker with 
man towards superman by means of the life* 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 197 

force, instead of the pretty-doll type illustrated 
by Nora. 

Since Shaw believes that the only thing the 
matter with the poor is poverty, he naturally de- 
duces that the socialization of production and ex- 
change would tend to make poor persons the 
sporadic exception rather than a defined class; 
all the misery, want, crime, and devastation 
wrought by the numerousness of those who lack 
the means of livelihood being thus mitigated, and, 
logically, in the end removed. But not only is 
poverty the matter with the poor; uselessness is 
the matter with the rich; meaning, that if the 
rich become useful, which, by the way, some of 
them do, there is no objection to their being rich 
unless that in so becoming they unfairly block 
the rights of others, namely, the poor. And just 
as truly as he cries up the worthy rich, his ob- 
jection not being to money, which he lauds to 
the skies in certain plays, notably " Major Bar- 
bara," his attack being directed against the un- 
fair sequestration of wealth at the expense of 
others: so he is perfectly open-eyed in his vindi- 
cation of the poor and the blame he puts upon 
present social laws and conceptions for the 



198 BERNARD SHAW 

sorry case of the proletariat, in recognizing that 
derelicts and hopeless incompetents are inevita- 
ble. This class of folk is made up of those who, 
if made solvent today, would be insolvent tomor- 
row by their own inability to adjust with their 
environment. In his more whimsical mood of 
raillery, Shaw would dispose of such waste ma- 
terial by some drastic removal by force; more 
seriously, he would take care of the wastrels and 
wasters through some beneficial agency like pen- 
sions, and enforced work. But continually, this 
writer of plays who is also an earnest student of 
social wrongs, disclaims the power to offer the 
remedy. In closing a discussion of the socializa- 
tion of eugenics, for example, he frankly says : 
" It is idle for an individual writer to carry so 
great a matter further in a pamphlet. A con- 
ference on the subject is the next step needed." 
In other words, Shaw's function is to suggest and 
stimulate and prod on to action. This is why he 
is not a philosopher in the full sense: he elects 
another and perhaps more useful role. 

Bernard Shaw has one powerful ally in his 
views on social betterment and reform. I refer 
to Time. Sundry of his ideas, that concerning 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 199 

eugenics, or the pensioning of motherhood, for 
instance, have been widely accepted in legal 
enactment during the twenty or more years since 
he first promulgated them. And looking at the 
socialistic ideal at its broadest and best, as the 
socialization of production and exchange, with 
no illegitimate encroachment upon private prop- 
erty and individual interests, there can be no 
question that the principle has been accepted 
and put into practice with increasing frequency. 
With regard to our municipalities, in fact, the 
socialistic trend has been marked. So true is 
this, that in a recent address the United States 
Commissioner of Immigration declared it was 
now apparent that the city of tomorrow will 
take over the public ownership of such utilities 
as the street railway and lighting plant, as a 
matter of course. The benefits accruing in those 
cases where it has been tried are too obvious 
not to act as object-lessons. Certain represen- 
tative European cities have long since shown the 
way; our own cities have begun to follow. Nor 
can it be doubted that in a scheme of local 
self-government like ours, a successfully estab- 
lished system locally illustrating a general truth 



200 BERNARD SHAW 

will be sure to influence state and federal action 
in the end. Shaw merely suffers under the disad- 
vantage of being a little ahead of his day; a dis- 
advantage steadily lessened as he grows older. 
Broadly speaking, if we will but separate his 
whimsicality of mood and statement from the un- 
derlying principles of his position, we shall be 
able to discover him as both sane and sound in 
the main contention. 

It is probable that the feature of Shaw's 
general social theory which awakens the greatest 
opposition and breeds misunderstanding, is his 
idea of sex relations, his conception of what is 
called love, and the results of it in the life of the 
family and society. This arouses more violent 
prejudice than any advocacy of the socialization 
of the means of production and distribution, for 
the excellent reason that it is the person who 
fears the expropriation of his private property, 
in the main, who becomes alarmed at the word, 
socialism; in other words, the capitalist, for the 
galled jade winces, naturally. But when a man 
cries it out from the housetops that so-called love 
is dust in the eyes of truth, he hits the tender 
spot, not of a class or a favored few, but of all 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 201 

of us; we are all involved in an attack upon the 
sacrosanct thing around which cluster our holi- 
est memories and beneath which germinate our 
deepest emotions. 

But it has become evident in the examination 
of the specific plays, and of Shaw's handling of 
the English language in general, that he exhibits 
himself as antisympathetic not to love as a 
sentiment based upon mutual respect and clear- 
seeing, but rather to that sort of passion in 
which the contracting parties are viciously set- 
ting up an imaginary idol, to be inevitably 
smashed in the disillusionment to follow the post- 
nuptial awakening. As usual, in order to shock 
us into thinking, he gives his meaning the fillip 
of interest which comes from an apparently con- 
tradictory statement. The natural history of 
man, which it is his object, as it was Balzac's, to 
study and set down, is obscured by this romantic 
mist which the wrong use of love throws in the 
eyes of all concerned, and especially in those of 
the two persons most concerned in the transac- 
tion. The life-force can be relied upon to furnish 
the attraction which shall draw a man and a 
woman together in a way to lead to matrimony, 



202 BERNARD SHAW 

or to its undesirable free-love equivalent. But 
Shaw would ask the self-conscious reason, not op- 
posing but cooperating with the life-force, to con- 
trol the destiny of lovers, and hence of the race, 
by the exercise of a common sense which refuses 
to be fooled when the most important thing is 
about to happen that can happen, not only to 
the pair who are central but to all society of 
which they are an inseparable part. He is so 
bold as to ask man to give up the pretty legend 
that Cupid is blind, and to look at the facts, as 
he would look at them in other vital matters. 
This request and attitude are, of course, ex- 
tremely repellent to all who cling to the Cupid 
tale, believing that if it be abandoned, romance 
will fly forever from the face of the earth. Shaw 
deems otherwise,^ and the preconception which in- 
volves the opinion on the part of a man that a 
woman is a goddess not to be otherwise en- 
treated; or the opinion on the part of a woman 
that a man is a hero incapable of human reac- 
tions, he deems a piece of vicious traditionalism, 
to be robustly exorcised, root and branch. And 
to mitigate this somewhat austere faith, he hu- 
morously recognizes the likelihood that, for a 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 203 

long time to come, the God of Love will continue 
to be pictured as blindfolded, and will shoot his 
arrows at the bull's-eye of our credulity. 

Upon analysis, then, and trying to see the gen- 
eral drift and meaning of the social teachings or 
implications of Bernard Shaw, as revealed in his 
drama : and bringing them into harmony with his 
more formal and sober theories as set forth in 
his economic writings, one is likely to find that 
here is a man whose views at bottom are per- 
fectly consistent (his views detached from his 
manner of presentation), and those of the pro- 
gressive social thinkers in that field; the varia- 
tions being such as not to invalidate the state- 
ment. One realizes that here is a popularizer of 
thought in a field given over to the specialist and 
to dryasdust investigation; a writer of plays, 
which means traditionally one who amuses the 
masses ; who yet, while he frankly accepts the 
limitation and first of all offers entertainment in 
the playhouse, nevertheless has beneath this aim 
and result a desire to spread the news and bring 
the gospel to the multitude ; who, by his own con- 
fession, is willing to foster the G. B. S. legend, 
if only, because he is supposed to be piquantly 



204 BERNARD SHAW 

naughty and destructively iconoclastic, he can 
thereby attract such general attention as to make 
matters like divorce, eugenics, and motherhood 
pensions, food for public discussion and vitally 
operative in the thought of the day. That some- 
what of pleasure in his personal prominence and 
profit in the practical results of his dramatic 
labor may enter into this more impersonal and 
laudable ambition, does not in the least qualify 
the fact of his beneficent service. No man has 
been franker in disclaiming unselfish aims ; Shaw 
would be the last person to deny his enjoyment 
in his prestige, and has that peculiar form of 
modesty which consists in vociferously crying up 
his own virtues ; a form not alone of modesty, by 
the way, but of honesty as well. He is of all 
men most foolish who thinks that when Bernard 
Shaw gravely considers the question of his su- 
periority to Shakspere, he is an egoist in the 
ordinary meaning of the word. 

The popularizer of anything is not of necessity 
shallow or viciously subversive of the truth. It 
may happen that, in the fullness of time, criticism 
will have successfully sifted Shaw's essentials of 
meaning from his apparently irresponsible con- 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 205 

tradictions and whimsicality of manner, and find 
him to be a stimulating social thinker, sound in 
substance beneath the fantastic embroidery of 
his speech and the criss-cross of his dialectic, tre- 
mendously earnest in intention, and doing yeoman 
work in making the general public aware of 
problems that without him, or such as he, they 
would certainly pass by on the other side. To 
have made an inert mass quiver with interest 
about an important social topic, instead of sleep- 
ing supine in its presence, surely this is some- 
thing; one who does it has done a community 
service, and been, intellectually, a good citizen. 

But his personal ideal goes further and is more 
explicit than this. Let us hear his own state- 
ment : 

" The final ideal for civic life is that every man 
and woman should set before themselves this 
goal: that by the labor of their lifetime they 
shall pay the debt of their rearing and education, 
and also contribute sufficient for a handsome 
maintenance during their old age. And more 
than that. Why should not a man say: When I 
die, my country shall be in my debt? Any man 
who has any religious belief will have dreamed 



206 BERNARD SHAW 

the dream that it is not only possible to die with 
his country in his debt, but with God in his debt 
also." 

This is a remarkable manifesto, and several 
things in it may be noted. First, the acceptance 
of the individual's duty to society; second, the 
acknowledgment of the idealist's dream of bet- 
terment, which connects Shaw with a radiant line 
from Plato to William Morris; and third, the 
distinct confession of faith in the linking of a re- 
ligious obligation with social service; it is a 
service which unites the individual not with 
brother man alone, but with God; the aspirations 
are twin aspirations, help for man and harmony 
with God. And it would be ungenerous not to 
add that Shaw's personal and private life are in 
complete and honest accord with this faith that 
is in him. 

It is, be it observed, a this-world religion; 
not the other-world religion that was earlier 
dominant. In this respect, Shaw is thoroughly a 
modern. His heaven is not a palace in the sky, 
but a purified planet in the solar system. God 
is a force among men that makes for righteous- 
ness, not the " big blue man " of the child's con- 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 207 

ception. That is what he means by the cryptic 
epigram : " Beware of the man whose God is in 
the skies." If his God is not operative in his 
daily life here on earth, Shaw has no use for him. 
He might be described not ineptly, in broad 
terms, as a Positivist, if one were anxious to fit 
a philosophic term upon him. Certainly he has 
the ideal of that aspect of thought; and would 
with George Eliot cry: 

" 0, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence" 

This kind of living-again is quite sufficient for 
Shaw, and keys him up to social service and per- 
sonal salvation: the salvation he does not seek, 
since his way of finding his life is to lose it in 
that same service. 

Bernard Shaw dreams forward to a socialized 
democracy where through selective breeding the 
citizenship shall be so improved as to make 
supermen and superwomen an attained t^^pe, not 
a sporadic phenemenon ; where the drone shall be 
replaced by the worker under right conditions, 



208 BERNARD SHAW 

and the criminal no longer has any justification 
because of inequitable laws or conventions ; where 
the truths about life and society are recognized 
and the highest in mankind is worshiped as that 
empirical deity which alone will save the wor- 
shiper ; a Positivist religion which sees the 
divine in the human and sees God as an evolu- 
tionary conception. It is a noble dream and has 
been well expressed in the words put into the 
mouth of Father Keegan in " John Bull's Other 
Island " : it is a beautifully mystic statement 
that is social-spiritual, made by one who is 
spiritual in his social view and social in his 
spirituality : 

Broadbent. Once when I was a small 
kid, I dreamt I was in heaven. . . . What 
is it like in jyour dreams ? 

Keegan. In my dreams it is a country 
where the state is the Church and the Church 
the people: three in one and one in three. 
It is a commonwealth where work is play and 
play is life: three in one and one in three. 
It is a temple in which the priest is the wor- 
shiper and the worshiper the worshiped: 
three in one and one in three. It is a god- 



THE SOCIAL THINKER 209 

head in which all life is human and all hu- 
manity divine: three in one and one in three. 
It is, in short, the dream of a madman. 
This is intensely autobiographic; I doubt if 
there be a passage in all Shaw's writings that is 
more so, even including the half-mocking, yet 
deeply pathetic word in which in the guise of the 
Father who is not mad, but only the mistaken 
idealist, he tells us that the world will not see the 
truth, because of the truth-bringer. And the ut- 
terance resolves itself naturally into a considera- 
tion of the poetic and philosophic elements that 
go to round out the full circle of his working 
hypothesis about life. 

For Shaw's service is not all embraced in what 
are strictly his social views. There is another 
and a vastly interesting aspect of his thought 
and meaning which remains to be considered: his 
philosophical and poetic implications. These 
are the more important to consider in that they 
are the very aspects of his thought and teaching 
likely to be overlooked, or at least minimized in 
the ordinary quick and shallow estimate of the 
man. They represent the least obvious phase of 
his complex personality; yet are they of deep 



210 BERNARD SHAW 

significance when we come to the attempt to see 
him in the round, and get a realization of the 
relative emphasis to be put upon one who so 
easily lends himself to newspaper caricature. 
Bernard Shaw out of drawing suffers exactly as 
any serious man suffers in that process ; and add 
to this the fact that he is just the sort of figure 
especially offering itself for misrepresentation, 
and that he has aided and abetted, maliciously, 
in the efforts to make a figurehead out of a real 
human being, and one sees how necessary it is 
to try for a proportionate picture. This most 
difficult part of the delineation of Shaw must 
now be essayed in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 

In a letter in the London Times, incidental to 
his controversy with Mr. W. H. Mallock, Bernard 
Shaw wrote : " They regard me as a cynic when 
I tell them that even the cleverest man will be- 
lieve anything he wishes to believe, in spite of all 
the facts and text-books in the world." 

One might well develop an elaborate argument 
to the conclusion that all our vaunted use of 
logic and pride in clear thinking are misleading, 
inasmuch as beneath the ratiocinative processes 
there is with human beings at their best and high- 
est of evolution a deep undertow of emotion and 
impulse which really floats the mind on to its 
apparently deductive conclusions. The remark 
of Arnold's that three-fourths of all self-con- 
scious life is lived in the emotions is a profound 
one. 

And the thought may be applied to Shaw, tak- 
ing his own words out of his mouth and good-na- 
811 



212 BERNARD SHAW 

turedly turning them against him. He is a vig- 
orous thinker whose style is admirably clear and 
cogent as an instrument to assist him to put forth 
his meaning. But au fond, his is an impulsive 
and intensely emotional nature which, swept 
along by honest conviction, races to its goal of 
conclusion, and in common with all men, uses the 
data gathered from investigation to buttress a 
belief that is not so much forced upon him by 
analj^sis as immediately appealing to his intui- 
tions, — the life-force at work in him. If one 
doubts that predispositions settle the subsequent 
deductions, even in the finest type of mind, one 
has only to collate the opinions upon the pres- 
ent war, and see how the matter of nationality 
inevitably settles the attitude and arguments 
of the thinker. ^ Each, with his particular ethnic 
bias, can deduce with admirable logic results dia- 
metrically opposed to another thinker whose 
country happens to be on the other side of the 
debate. The leading minds of Europe have been 
on parade in this fashion, and proved conclu- 
sively that logic will never be allowed to inter- 
fere with feeling. 

It is by the application of this principle, too 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 213 

often overlooked, that help will be afforded the 
student of Shaw when, as will frequently turn 
out, he seems contradictory or inconsistent. He 
feels his way to the truth and then demonstrates 
it, at least to his own satisfaction, and often to 
yours. And it is the feeling beneath the argu- 
ment that gives it warmth and fascination. 

It is this truth about certain of his modes of 
thought and ways of expression, coupled with his 
tendency to bend his mental processes to the de- 
mand of his sense of right, his natural affiliations 
and sympathies, that must not for a moment be 
dropped from mind when we try to understand 
and relate to his general interpretation of life 
his fairly mystic explanation of man as spirit 
and the universe as an experiment of the life-force. 

Indeed, the side of Shaw's personality which is 
hinted at in the title of this chapter, is somewhat 
puzzlingly in evidence when we strive to get a 
complete view of him and his work. It is inter- 
woven more or less with his social teachings and 
yet can be seen to be separate from them. The 
previous remark that he is not a philosopher is 
by no means meant to be interpreted that a cer- 
tain philosophical attitude was not plainly to be 



214 BERNARD SHAW 

detected in his thought; but only that a sys- 
tematized and organic statement of it was not 
vouchsafed us. The view runs through all his 
thinking, and explains some of the seeming con- 
tradictions and inconsistencies in his writing. 
How, for instance, can it be reconciled that a 
thinker whose general tendency is to show himself 
a man of his day in his preference for scientific 
conceptions and methods of thought, is yet the 
man who boldly, and as it were, in the very teeth 
of science, challenges the germ theory of disease 
and fights against vaccination.? We must make 
an attempt at least to show such an apparent 
volte-face possible if we would see him as he is; 
and the riddle is not solved until we take into 
account a part of his nature which lies deeper 
than intellectual processes and reminds us of his 
own words : " the unconscious self is the real 
genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment 
your conscious self meddles with it." I believe it 
to be this subliminal energized daimon of Shaw, 
to borrow the Socratic name for it, which goes 
far to explain him, — and moreover to give him 
his value for the world. Here stands out in 
sudden, startling relief a side of his nature 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 215 

which may seem oddly at variance with the Shaw 
who writes so clearly on municipal trading; a 
side that compels us, nevertheless, to see and 
say that he has deep-lying qualities of imagina- 
tion and emotion hardly to be suspected by one 
who generalizes from his more customary appear- 
ance as a hard-headed social controversialist. 
To expect an analytic pamphleteer and find a 
poet mystic, is certainl}^ something of a shock; 
another shock from the man whose business 
seems to be to eject us violently from our com- 
placent beds of easy, settled conviction about 
things in general. 

In so far as he seizes on the idea of superman, 
and then endeavors to attain to the higher type 
of development through the agency of the social- 
ized state, Shaw looks to Nietzsche for certain 
parts of his scheme of social amelioration. But 
he separates from him squarely and forever in 
the German's teaching of the duty of the strong 
to override the weak and in his contempt for 
slave (Christian) morality. In complete con- 
trast with this view, which is the application to 
human society of the stern biologic law of the 
survival of the fittest, Shaw with his warm 



216 BERNARD SHAW 

espousal of the cause of the poor, the weak, and 
the suffering, would help brother man in the up- 
ward path even if in so doing he held back the 
quick coming of Overman. Tender consideration 
for the derelicts and incompetents, — though they 
irritate him extremely, and in a whimsical mood 
which hides earnest purpose none the less, he ex- 
coriates them and proposes speedy extermina- 
tion, — is surely his general attitude. Here we 
probably find a reason for his contemptuous 
flings at the evolutionary doctrine and at the 
deification of the laws of physical science as ap- 
plied to human psychology and social better- 
ment. He would with Huxley " oppose the cos- 
mic process," wherever it interferes with the 
higher law of altruistic consideration of brother 
man. Indeed, his tenderness does not stop with 
the arbitrary line set up between man and so- 
called brute, for his vegetarianism is the out- 
ward sign of a recognition of animal rights as 
well, the view which Salt made so sympathetic 
years ago. To Shaw it is repellent to eat " the 
slaughtered carcasses " of his humbler brothers 
of the field or air. And this is a moral repel- 
lency as well as an esthetic objection. In the 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 217 

same way, taking refuge in the dictates of 
his spiritual nature, he rejects with scorn the 
teachings which declare that we must arm our- 
selves against contagious physical trouble by in- 
oculation or other preventives. The idealist in 
him resents the tyranny of the flesh implied in 
these scientific conceptions and beliefs, and hence 
he presents the odd spectacle of a thinker who 
in many ways seems peculiarly the product of 
the age of Darwin, Spencer, and Wallace, of 
Haeckel, Lamarck, and Nietzsche, valorously 
combating the very theories which are the ap- 
plied logic of the scientist's faith. It is the poet, 
the idealist, the mystic, at war with the shrewd 
publicist and social student. 

The same tendency in Shaw leads him to ac- 
cept with warmth and preach with vigor the idea 
of the life-force, another Nietzschean conception 
which he adapts to his own purposes. What is 
this power as he conceives it, and what its ap- 
plication to man in the Shavian faith.? 

The life-force is a modern representation of 
God, not so much a Being, as a Becoming tend- 
ency in the universe, an upward striving which, 
working through countless aeons, has brought 



218 BERNARD SHAW 

man far along in his toilsome journey towards 
Overman. And it is Shaw's idea that if the in- 
dividual will but cease from conventional inhibi- 
tions and traditional negations, if he be not 
dominated too much by a series of sacred Don'ts, 
which shift with time and country and social 
milieu; and the man be himself, join himself to, 
and become a part of, the life-force, he will thus 
be cooperative with the great creative purpose of 
the scheme of things, and, as the theologian would 
put it, be reconciled with God. It is this view 
which gives its cogency to the following words of 
this curious mixture of materialist and mystic: 

"This is the true joy of life: the being used 
for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty 
one. Being a force of nature, instead of a 
feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and griev- 
ances, complaining that the world will not devote 
itself to making you happy." 

Bernard Shaw cries out, " Hitch yourself to 
the life-force," very much with the same mean- 
ing which led Emerson to cry, " Hitch your 
wagon to a star," save that the older thinker was 
for the moment thinking most of the individual, 
while the younger is thinking of the social aim. 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 219 

the racial result. Emerson is more purely an in- 
dividualist than Shaw, whose individualism is 
tempered by his socialism and his social yearn- 
ing. The difference is not alone in the men, but 
in their generation. 

Again and again this faith in man as able to 
connect himself with the celestial stream of things, 
crops out in Shaw's dramas. It is strong and 
clear as we saw in " The Showing-up of Blanco 
Posnet," one of his most significant works with 
this essential philosophy in mind. Blanco, much 
distressed in mind to find himself neither a 
straight bad man nor a good one, harangues the 
"boys," present in the court room: 

"What's this game that upsets our game? 
For seems to me there's two games being played. 
Our game is a rotten game that makes me feel 
that I'm dirt and that you're all as rotten as me. 
T'other game may be a silly game; but it ain't 
rotten." And he expresses his faith in God in 
this fashion: 

" You bet He didn't make us for nothing ; and 
He wouldn't have made us at all if He could 
have done His work without us. By Gum, that 
must be what we're for! He'd never have made 



220 BERNARD SHAW 

us to be rotten drunken blackguards like me, and 
good-for-nothing rips like Feemy. He made me 
because He had a job for me. He let me run 
loose till the j ob was ready ; and then I had to 
come along and do it, hanging or no hanging. 
And I tell you it didn't feel rotten: it felt bully, 
just bully." 

And when the pseudo-religionist. Elder Daniels, 
gets off the usual cant : " Be of good cheer, 
brothers. Fight on. Seek the path," Blanco 
contemptuously turns upon him with, " No. 
No more paths. No more broad and narrow. 
No more good and bad. There's no good and 
bad; but, by Jiminy, gents, there's a rotten 
game and there's a great game. I played the 
rotten game; but the great game was played on 
me ; and now I'm for the great game every time. 
Amen. Gentlenfen, let us adjourn to the saloon. 
I stand the drinks." 

Here is once more set forth picturesquely and 
pathetically this sense of the overruling mystic 
power which controls, perforce, the instincts of 
rough-and-ready humanity, and compels it to 
adopt the motto per aspera ad astra. 

We saw in studying the two plays that, allow- 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 221 

ing for the difference of setting and type, this is 
exactly what we get from another of Shaw's 
protagonists, again an American, Dick Dudgeon 
in " The Devil's Disciple." 

Surely, no one can question that this is a mys- 
tic conception of man; it is the old theory of in- 
spiration in a new garb of modernity; it is the 
Delphic oracle under another name, the Christian 
idea of God Immanent, and the " still, small 
voice " of conscience bidding the sinner do right. 
It does not at all change the concept to dress it 
out with the terms of present-day physical 
science; to call it the subliminal self working in 
us and more powerful than any self-conscious 
reasoning process. And Shaw is a hearty be- 
liever (in the religious sense) in this wonderful 
power that transcends man and gives him his 
deepest significance. This, it may be clearly 
seen, is a metaphysical notion, pure and simple, 
a fine one, and one that appeals to that type of 
modern mind, which, while accepting scientific 
conceptions, yet is by nature religious, and needs 
for its comfort and best expression an aim and 
an authority beyond the domain of physical 
tests and proofs. This faith in the supercon- 



222 BERNARD SHAW 

science, or the subliminal operation of the Ego, 
is implicit in much modern thinking. We get it 
in Bergson when he says : " we wish to know the 
reason why we have made up our mind, and we 
find that we have decided without any reason, and 
perhaps against every reason. But, in certain 
cases, that is the best reason." 

Shaw finds his " reason " in this evolutional 
Higher Will, as we might call it, of man. He 
believes in the will to live of Schopenhauer, the 
will to power of Nietzsche, and the Wish of 
Freud; his philosophy, like theirs, is a wilful one. 
But he adds an altruistic aspiration in the serv- 
ice of others which is absent from their teach- 
ing, and thus gets the lift into all his work 
which is always in the thinking of the sincere 
idealist. 

It is only through man that this will-to-aspire 
can get itself into action and just here is man's 
significance, justification, and glory. And man's 
sense of thus being pricked on, so that the noble 
in him must be ever uneasy unless he is cooperat- 
ing with the life-force in this fashion, is the ever- 
lasting gadfly that in the soul of man stings him 
into worthy action. In " Man and Superman," 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 223 

which is of all the plays that which contains the 
heart of his doctrine, he makes Don Juan say: 
" I tell you that as long as I can conceive some- 
thing better than myself, I cannot be easy un- 
less I am striving to bring it into existence or 
clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life. 
That is the working within me of Life's incessant 
aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, 
intenser self-consciousness and clearer self-under- 
standing." This need puzzled poor Blanco, but 
he accepted its prompting, nevertheless, without 
any hesitation. His " By gum, that must be 
what we're for," is Shaw crystallized and a su- 
preme affirmation of faith. It contains the whole 
Shavian working hypothesis of life. 

But this individual connecting himself with the 
life-force might be mistaken for a sort of fatal- 
ism; the individual becoming an automaton 
pushed on to this mystic end by a power quite 
outside his own volition. Such would be a mis- 
representation of Shaw's full meaning. To join 
the life-force is to be free: free to exercise your 
long cramped unused spiritual muscles. Thus, 
Margaret in " Fanny's First Play," after her 
escapade in the dance hall, has a talk with her 



224 BERNARD SHAW 

mother, in which she says : " I shall never speak 
in the old way again. I've been set 'free from 
this silly little hole of a house and all its pre- 
tenses. I know now that I am stronger than 
you and Papa. I haven't found that happiness 
of yours that is within yourself; but I've found 
strength. For good or evil, I am set free ; and 
none of the things that used to hold me can 
hold me now." And again she remarks to her 
sufficiently horrified parent : " I was set free for 
evil as well as for good," meaning that the price 
of strength is freedom, which, of course, involves 
choice, and therefore evil as something to whet 
one's strength upon. 

Extremely interesting, too, when we are en- 
deavoring to come to close grip with this subtlest 
aspect of Sliaw's belief and teaching, are the 
highly mystic words put into the mouth of the 
Mayoress in " Getting Married " ; words so star- 
tlingly different from her usual self-controlled 
utterance that the easy thing to do is to as- 
sume that she is represented as having a " con- 
trol " in the spiritualistic parlance, and so is 
purely passive in the matter. But one who rec- 
ognizes the general seriousness of the writer 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 225 

must perforce find significance in these impas- 
sioned sentences, in which there appears to be a 
statement of the spiritual relations of man and 
woman as mystically poetic as if they came from 
a Swedenborg rather than a Bernard Shaw. 
Mrs. George has a right to vatic words, because, 
as she puts it, " I've been myself. I've not been 
afraid of myself. And at last I have escaped 
from myself, and am become a voice for them 
that are afraid to speak, and a cry for the 
hearts that break in silence." And then she tells 
the bishop of a love which he seems to have in- 
spired in her, a love that is to the earth loves 
as the light of some solar luminary to so many 
candle dips: 

" When you loved me I gave you the whole 
sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity 
in the single moment, strength of the mountains 
in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all 
the seas in one impulse of your soul. A moment 
only; but was it not enough? Were you not 
paid then for all the rest of your struggle on 
earth? Must I mend your clothes and sweep 
your floors as well? Was it not enough? I 
paid the price without bargaining; I bore the 



226 BERNARD SHAW 

children without flinching; was that a reason for 
heaping fresh burdens on me? I carried the 
child in my arms; must I carry the father too? 
When I opened the gates of paradise, were you 
blind? Was it nothing to you? When all the 
stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept 
you into the heart of heaven, were you deaf? 
Were you dull? Was I no more to you than a 
bone to a dog? Was it not enough? We spent 
eternity together; and you ask me for a little 
lifetime more. We possessed all the universe 
together; and you ask me to give you my scanty 
wages as well. I have given you the greatest of 
all things ; and you ask me to give you little 
things. I gave you my own soul: you ask me for 
my body as a plaything. Was it not enough? 
Was it not enough?" 

Enigmatic? If you will. But, of a verity, 
splendidly, soaringly spiritual, and surcharged 
with mystic implications. It is as if this mun- 
dane Mrs. George of the play wished to remind 
us, while the author through her also told us, 
that the highest conception of human Love, a 
thing so bandied about and cheapened and made 
common and gross and of the earth earthy, 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 227 

was in essence a supernal sentiment; that in 
heaven they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage, their amity being like that of the 
angels. 

And again, in " Caesar and Cleopatra," when 
the greatest captain of Time, alone (as he 
thinks) in the moon-blanched Egyptian desert, 
whispers to the Sphinx the inner secrets of his 
personality, we seem to get in him, as an impres- 
sive mouthpiece, the thinker's conviction that 
there is another life than that of high noon, of 
ratiocination and of commonsense; and that the 
solution of both personality and life, since all 
men live in their dreams, is here: 

" Hail, Sphinx : salutation from Julius Caesar ! 
I have wandered in many lands seeking the lost 
regions from which my birth into this world 
exiled me, and the company of creatures such as 
myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men 
and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to 
me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my 
day's deed, and think my night's thought. In 
the little world yonder. Sphinx, my place is as 
high as yours in this great desert; only I wan- 
der, and you sit still ; I conquer, and you endure ; 



228 BERNARD SHAW 

I work and wonder, you watch and wait; I 
look up and am dazzled, look down and am dark- 
ened, look round and am puzzled, whilst your 
eyes never turn from looking out on the world — 
to the lost region — the home from which we 
strayed. Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the 
race of men, are no strangers to one another; 
have I not been conscious of you and of this 
place since I was born? Rome is a madman's 
dream; this is my reality. These starry lamps 
of yours I have seen from afar in Gaul, in 
Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly, signaling great 
secrets to some eternal sentinel below, whose post 
I never could find. And here at last is their 
sentinel, — an image of the constant and immortal 
part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in 
the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed 
mountains at night to hear in the distance the 
stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your 
sands in forbidden play — our invisible children, 
O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither 
was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose 
genius you are the symbol: part brute, part 
woman, and part god, — nothing of the man in me 
at all. Have I read your riddle. Sphinx.? " 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 229 

Incidentally, it may be remarked that this is a 
superb burst of poetry, a passage that our time 
will not willingly let die out of the swelling 
diapason of its imaginative expression. But it is 
also fascinating for the philosophy it contains. 
I, for one, sincerely believe that Shaw is saying 
here what Emerson says in his great essay on 
love; he directs our attention to it as a divine 
principle far above and beyond our petty at- 
tempt to catch it in man-made devices called 
marriage; a principle which each pair of lovers 
seizes fleetingly, but then, as Browning has it, 

" Then the good minute goes; " 

a principle and a passion by which the whole 
creation moves, in which it has its being; Na- 
ture's way, so Emerson points out, of leading 
lovers through the illusion that it is an end in it- 
self, on to that realization which culminates in 
the recognition of it as cosmic, eternal, not of 
this world, but of all the worlds that be. And 
for Shaw, the way whereby this may be seized by 
the individual is to see in himself a reflection of 
God in will and power (when we join the life 



230 BERNARD SHAW 

force, the elan vital of Bergson) and then work 
with all one's might for the social bettering of 
men and women. 

There is a touch of this same mystic poetry in 
the language of Marchbanks in " Candida," and 
his final rejection of the Morell menage because 
he sees that his destiny demands something bet- 
ter and beyond, he having 

" The desire of the moth for the star. 
Of the night for the morrow. 
The devotion to something afar 
From the sphere of our sorrow,''^ 

That is what Shaw, like the true idealist he is 
in this recurrent mood, must be after; the dream 
that is behind the reality, and always more de- 
sirable. This is the secret of Marchbanks that 
has so puzzled the critics, as was noted in the 
analysis of " Candida." An American went 
direct to the author himself in search of an ex- 
planation of a rather enigmatical passage; which 
had already been whimsically replied to by Mr. 
Shaw, as one can see by consulting Dr. Hender- 
son's biography. But this time, instead of hid- 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 231 

ing behind his mask of levity, the writer gave an 
answer which so far has not I believe been given 
other publicity than its original appearance in 
a western college paper, and is well worth quota- 
tion here: 



Adelphi Terrace, 
London, W. C, 
6 January, 1900. 
Dear Sir: 

In Candida the poet begins by pursuing hap- 
piness with a beloved woman as the object of his 
life. When at last, under the stress of a most 
moving situation, she paints for him a convincing 
picture of what that happiness is, he sees at once 
that such happiness could never fulfil his destiny. 
" I no longer desire happiness — life is nobler 
than that. Out, then, into the night with me." 
That is, out of this stuffy little nest of happiness 
and sentiment into the grandeur, the majesty, 
the holiness that night means to me, the poet. 
Candida and Morell do not understand this. 
Neither did you, eh.'^ 

G. Bernard Shaw. 

The correspondence here with certain words of 
Caesar in the passage quoted, will not escape the 



232 BERNARD SHAW 

judicious. And surely the idealist is the same as 
in the other excerpts. 

And for a final reference: this mystic note, 
this appeal to a test that is not of the workaday 
world, sounds through the words of the weak and 
erring artist, Dubedat, when he comes to die: the 
scene in " The Doctor's Dilemma," where this 
takes place being almost if not quite the most re- 
markable single scene in all Shaw's plays: 

" I know that in an accidental sort of way, 
struggling through the unreal part of life, I 
haven't always been able to live up to my ideal. 
But in my own real world I have never done any- 
thing wrong, never denied my faith, never been 
untrue to myself. I've been threatened and 
blackmailed and insulted and starved. But, I've 
played the game. I've fought the good fight. 
And now it's ;all over there's an indescribable 
peace. I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, 
and Rembrandt ; in the might of design, the mys- 
tery of color, the redemption of all things by 
Beauty everlasting, and the message of art that 
has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen." 

I should suppose that no member of the great 
confederated band of artists could find it easy to 



THE POET AND MYSTIC ^33 

get through this scene dry-eyed. And it is of a 
piece with the other passages collated for the 
purpose of producing a clear, culminative effect 
upon the reader; the effect of seeing a side of 
Shaw easily overlooked perhaps, but of cardinal 
importance in our view of him. With regard to 
space occupied, this phase may seem minor, it 
may be granted: but with regard to his true 
orientation, I consider it to be central and il- 
luminating to the extreme circumference of his 
thought. 

There is one rather obvious defect in this con- 
ception of the working of human psychology. 
It assumes too much of poor average human na- 
ture. It would work better if all society were 
made up of members so far along the path of 
evolution in self-restraint, noble desire, and nor- 
mal reaction to the right stimuli as is the pro- 
pounder of the philosophy, Bernard Shaw. It is, 
in other words, a counsel of perfection which is 
for overmen rather than for the usual mundane 
middle-class English folk who, after all, are the 
people to put it into practice, if it is to be more 
than a paper theory. As a way to attain Over- 
man, it is not valid because it assumes Overman 



234 BERNARD SHAW 

at the start. Shaw and those like him may be 
safe to let themselves go, to connect themselves 
with the life-force, to let themselves be carried 
on and up by a sort of Dionysiac frenzy, a noble 
Berserker rage. The trouble in following one's 
subliminal self, so the average person might plain- 
tively retort (that is, one's impulses and emotional 
dictations), is that they are quite likely to land 
one in jail. 

Yet Shaw can neatly turn upon his objectors 
and remark that while it is true enough the 
average man will not respond in the most satis- 
factory manner when he is asked to be himself in 
the self-willed way, the need to ask him to try it 
is illustrated by his very lack of its proper use. 
We must make a beginning, and let the principle 
be illustrated by the few natural leaders in order 
that gradually, O, very gradually, men in gen- 
eral may be taught to act with free, strong voli- 
tion and be their best selves, not be crushed by 
the hold-backs of caution and the timid negations 
of conventions; thus exercising that trained Will 
which alone can breed real character in place of 
the duplication of flabby invertebrates. As a 
principle, then, this new hitching one's wagon to 



THE POET AND MYSTIC ^S5 

a star or merging in the mystic life-force, has a 
great deal in its favor. 

That it is a genuinely high and beautiful con- 
ception of life and of duty is beyond all question. 
If the idea were a piece of mistaken idealism on 
this thinker's part, it would remain a creed to 
respect and admire. If the dream could never be 
made flesh, it would still be a dream to arouse 
the imagination and awake the sympathies, and 
comfort the heart. I, for one, am not inclined 
to turn cynic as to its legitimacy; especially as 
it is firm-based upon an indisputable truth about 
Man : that his emotions furnish the dynamo back 
of all his most typical acts and deepest reactions. 
Some of us, therefore, so far from objecting 
to this Shaw of the mystic dream, as an unex- 
pected and at first perhaps rather disturbing 
deuteragonist to the protagonist of the Shaw 
who talks of municipal trading and of eugenics, 
and whose deepest concern seems to be an equita- 
ble adjustment of the rates, welcome the poet 
dreamer who catches a vision of the State Beau- 
tiful, and believes in his soul that he is on the 
side of the angels, although he no longer calls 
them angels but Superfolk; whose heaven is 



^36 BERNARD SHAW 

earth made just, and clean and honest, and 
lovely. Respect and liking go out naturally, in- 
stinctively, to a thinker with this faith, and with 
the courage of his convictions; whose work and 
words really tally, whose life might be called 
austerely pure, were it not that it is tempered 
with a smile, now kindly, now satiric, and human- 
ized by a Celtic disposition to engage in a fair 
fight: a fight of ringing blows, and no quarter; 
a fight where, the affair once settled, the antago- 
nists, wiping the sweat from their brows, shake 
hands and mutually admire each other's good 
qualities. It is noteworthy in all Shaw's battles 
that he seems to hate the sin rather than the 
sinner, and always produces the effect of a man 
ready and willing to resume fraternal relations, 
when the shindy is over. But while the encounter 
is on, beware! ^o man can hit harder or more 
viciously, no man is less likely to spare his op- 
ponent. I fancy that all good argufiers have 
said in their hearts : from such a debater, good 
Lord, deliver us! 

And so we begin with a contentious publicist 
and end with a literary artist and poet: which 
is only, after all, walking all the way round the 



THE POET AND MYSTIC 237 

circumference of a complex modern personality. 
We begin by thinking of him as a fantastic fel- 
low, and end with an impression of underlying 
good sense; agreeing with the author's own esti- 
mate of himself, set down with his habitual 
frankness : " It is the sensible schemes unfortu- 
nately that are hopeless in England. Therefore 
I have great hopes that my own views, though 
fundamentally sensible, can be made to appear 
fantastic enough to have a chance." What of 
contradiction and paradox may be there, should 
not obscure for us the main fact that the char- 
acter is consistently one: rock-founded, steadily 
orientated, and impressive in itself and because 
it represents so much of our Time, which in it- 
self in its turn is also complex, paradoxical, and 
baffling; yet, again like Shaw, intensely interest- 
ing for those very reasons ! 



CHAPTER IX 

THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 

Stripped of much nonsense which has come to 
be its connotation during the development of 
critical nomenclature, the word technic, after all, 
means a very simple thing. It refers to the most 
workmanlike way of doing that which in litera- 
ture has for its object the imparting of pleas- 
ure. In the fine arts, whose aim it is to please, 
technic is that manner of performing the task 
which results in the greatest content of satisfac- 
tion in the recipient. And perhaps it is not 
fundamental but arbitrary to confine the process 
to non-utilitarian labors. It may be that the 
bootblack, as he polishes your boots, possesses 
technic in so far as he takes pleasure in and gives 
you pleasure from the perfect polish he lovingly 
bestows. An artistic desire issuing in a beauti- 
ful result, why is that not always an illustration 
of true technic, albeit the thing done is practi- 
cal, utilitarian, not associated with what are 
238 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 239 

called the arts? The utilitarian nature of the 
work should not blind us to the artistic instinct 
which is involved. 

Be this as it may, a man has technic when he 
has learned to conserve his artistic interests by 
doing a given job in the most economical way for 
him and the most pleasurable to the art patron. 
Bernard Shaw has written some thirty dramas 
and has made himself famous in so doing. Many 
of his plays are solid theatre successes, not 
merely plays that appeal to the select. The box 
office has been so often his friend that he is a 
moderately rich man from his dramatic work; to 
be respected, therefore, by a practical, commer- 
cial Broadway manager, as a playwright whose 
wares have market value. And his plays in gen- 
eral, whether commercially effective or not, are 
taken seriously by the critics and enlightened 
public followers of the theatre in many lands. 
He has, then, been successful both in the critical 
and practical sense of the word. 

He began by violently disturbing the precon- 
ceived notions of what a play is and how it 
should be written. Indeed, he may be described 
broadly as a professional overthrower of con- 



240 BERNARD SHAW 

ventions ; he comes not to bring peace but a 
sword. As to the drama, having a new thing to 
say, he invented a way to say it in order to say 
it effectively, or at all. At first, the novelty of 
the new thing, in manner and matter, made it 
unacceptable; later, it became an element in 
Shaw's success. The critics were forced to do 
what under compulsion they have always done, 
given time enough : revise the assumed " laws," 
in order to account for the strange new phe- 
nomenon. Whether they liked it or not, here was 
something which compelled attention, would draw 
interest to itself: and seemed to reach the desired 
result by an illegitimate bypath from the beaten 
highroad. The history of criticism is ironically 
amusing because it is the exposure of this critical 
discomfiture iruihe face of the pioneers who have 
made the history of the arts. We see it il- 
lustrated with Wordsworth over a century ago 
in England; with Whitman in America, half a 
century since; with Wagner in Germany at 
about the same time. Truly original creative 
persons have a way of seeming to upset stand- 
ards ; in the end, it is perceived that they are 
only enlarging boundaries, and so advancing the 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 241 

interests of art. And the professional critics, 
prone to conservatism, suspicious of any depar- 
ture from the usual, follow these leaders cau- 
tiously from afar, grumbling and very loth; only 
at last to turn on the poor guessing public with 
a superbly inconsistent, " I told you so." Two 
views are still tenable with regard to Shaw as 
an artist of the theatre. One may say that his 
plays are bad technically, but that the intellectual 
stimulus he offers is so great, and his topics so 
vital, and his gift of word and for character so 
decided, that these dramas appeal in spite of poor 
construction, inadequate dramatic motivation and 
handling. One who inclines to this view is likely 
to refer glibly to the " talk drama " of Shaw (as 
if all drama that is drama in the full sense were 
not talk drama), and to speak of his plays as 
" dramatised conversation." 

The other view, maintained by the present critic, 
sees in the Shaw plays a skilful adaptation of 
means to end. A typical Shavian play is a story 
framework around an idea which the playwright 
wishes to enforce ; and having the technical prob- 
lem of telling the story within stage limitations 
so as to make it interesting, more interesting than 



242 BERNARD SHAW 

it would be in the form of narrated fiction, for 
example, while bringing out the idea inherent in 
the treatment. Given this object, which, be it 
noted, is not always the object of a play, which 
may contain no idea at all, nor have a desire to 
bring home such an idea, — it is accomplished with 
the sure hand which can only be attained by sound 
workmanship. Technic has no meaning save as 
it is related to a given form and purpose. Shaw's 
drama — let me say it again — is the drama of 
idea: intellectual drama, drama that is psycho- 
logic in that its aim is to reveal character in the 
cause of an idea, and therefore doctrinaire, in 
that through dialogue, scene, and action it desires 
to maintain, set forth, and bring home a theory. 
Over and above this, to be good drama, there 
must be entertainment in the way of a story, with 
attractions along the way in wit, humor, charac- 
terization, and the heightened moments called sit- 
uations. These are to be found in Shaw. But, 
evidently, in such drama, story becomes secondary, 
character is important, and it is the underlying 
idea which unifies all. 

If this purpose and its legitimacy be accepted, 
the careful student of Shaw cannot escape the 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 24S 

conclusion that he is an able craftsman, conscious 
of his material, knowing how to handle his tools, 
and achieving results that are not accidental. His 
dramas are by no means on a par of merit (as he 
would be the first to say), either for interest, im- 
portance of theme, or dramaturgic skill ; he him- 
self calls " Fanny's First Play " a " potboiler," 
and "Great Catherine" "tomfoolery." No 
writer sees himself with clearer eyes. His product 
is unequal, exactly as is that of all able artists, 
beginning with Homer. He falls below his best 
at times, since the definition of " best " demands---^ 
and implies it. tut ^rtvailingly, &9d markedly 
in eight or ten pieces,Hiie skilled shaping of the 
material in order to get the essentials out of the 
subject-matter and impart the satisfaction ger- 
mane to the theatre is too definitely exhibited to 
give the theory that Shaw's method of dramatic 
writing is a haphazard dash at an art he does not 
command, a leg to stand on. This is no for- 
tuitous success. As Dr. Henderson puts it, " he 
violates all the rules, yet turns the trick " ; and 
the violation, be it added, is only seeming. Let 
us put it in this way: he violates existing con- 
ventions and makes some new rules, since a rule is 



244 BERNARD SHAW 

but the formulation of a successful way of accom- 
plishing a writer's purpose. It might further be 
argued that in those cases where the technic of a 
play seems most careless or furthest removed from 
the proper method, it is to be explained not as 
ignorance or carelessness, but from the nature of 
the piece, the author possibly caring more about 
making his thesis plain than he does to give his 
play acting value. It should not be forgotten and 
may be said again that by deliberate choice Shaw 
elects to write the drama in which thesis is promi- 
nent, not to say dominant. He has declared that 
there is " no future now fpr a§y drama without 
music except the drama of thought," and stated 
his own " determination to accept problem as the 
normal material of the drama." 

It can readily be admitted that there are some 
iplays of Shaw more dramatic than others, or plays 
more unsuited to the stage than others : " Can- 
dida," for example, being first-class stage mate- 
rial, where " Getting Married " is far behind it 
in this respect. Yet why assume that the latter 
is an instance of malexpertness, while the former 
accidentally happens to be good? It would appear 
more rational to believe that the playwright, hav- 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 245 

ing demonstrated, as he so often does, his ability 
to make drama of acting quality, deliberately 
chose in other cases to forfeit a certain amount 
of stage effectivism, for the sake of dealing with 
his subject in a way best to convey his ideas. In 
fact, it is part of Shaw's originality that he has 
dared to introduce unstagy matter into the thea- 
tre and given it sufficient theatric appeal to keep 
it there long enough to carry a message to folk 
ready to receive it. It is perfectly safe to say 
that the author himself never imagined the acting 
value of " Getting Married " to equal that of 
" Candida " or " Mrs. Warren's Profession." But 
he wished to put a thorough discussion of mar- 
riage upon the boards ; and gave it enough of viva- 
cious life and novel interest to make it amusing 
to a general audience. He threw it into one-act 
form because he knew he did not have a story of 
sufficient constructional value to justify the usual 
form; a fact in itself illustrating his freedom 
and skill in stage architecture. And his subject 
being, as it was, intensely contemporary and his 
characterization and dialogue as usual brilliant, 
he was able to overcome, to a great extent at 
least, the natural objection brought against this 



246 BERNARD SHAW 

drama that it was " nothing but talk." The 
point to be made here is, that Bernard Shaw in 
his play-making is not to be placed with Mr. 
Granville Barker in his " Madras House " or 
Tchekov in his " Cherry Orchard," where the re- 
sult is not a play at all; by a play I mean a 
stage story coherently and progressively aiming 
at a climax, the natural and inevitable target of 
all good drama. And the talk in favor of this 
amorphous play-making which neglects plot and 
organic development for the sake of other and 
better things, is effectually blocked by replying 
that you can get all those other estimable things 
more surely if you obey the laws of sound 
dramaturgy at the same time. Delight is a great 
digester of " truth to life," and to be dull and 
dreary is to be " real " in no desirable sense. 
And Shaw, much misunderstanding to the con- 
trary, does not forget this fundamental demand 
of the stage in his work. His drama may be un- 
usual in form but it is not formless. 

But the mistake about Shaw's technic goes 
deeper. In the piece mentioned and in others, the 
assumption that there is a story and no growth 
or organic approach to a climax is quite aside 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 247 

from the truth. The story is there, but the tell- 
ing of it varies according to the sort of story it is, 
and his purpose in treating it. And it is signifi- 
cant and most helpful in understanding Shaw's 
method, to see that the story looked at by itself 
is not seldom far-fetched, farcical, improbable, 
whereas the psychology of the characters is seri- 
ously treated, and beneath the fantastic frame- 
work of plot lurks an equally serious social 
commentary. The dramatist seems to give his 
seriousness the relief of this external foolery, thus 
catching the attention of the light-minded, who 
otherwise would go about their business and never 
heed him at all. And it is the confusion begotten 
by these two things, I believe, fable and message, 
that land those simple souls in trouble who seek 
hastily and half-heartedly to understand this 
writer of stage plays who happens also to be 
the sober writer of essays on political economy. 
Nothing could be wilder in extravaganza than the 
fable play, " Androcles and the Lion," as we have 
noted. Yet, witnessing it, when one is already 
famihar with this dramatist, one is inclined to 
refrain from the guifaw aroused by the trick lion, 
because of the constant underlying suggestions re- 



248 BERNARD SHAW 

garding religion, specific and narrow, and universal 
and fundamental. The beast epic in relation to 
man, the law of kindness towards our elder and 
humbler brothers, these are so much in the 
thoughtful spectator's mind, that as the animal 
walks off the stage with Androcles, and the un- 
thinking have their laugh, the meditative minor- 
ity to be found even in an American theatre may 
find itself not far from the civilized tear. To hu- 
manize frigid historical material is in itself an 
achievement the value of which remains after the 
laughter dies. 

The statement hereinbefore made that the tell- 
ing of the story varies with the manner of story 
it is, technic being thus plastic to the shifting 
demand, has been illustrated in my treatment of 
" The Devil's Disciple," as well as in other in- 
stances. 

The point is, that the intention to halt what is 
called " action " on the stage for the sake of 
discussion, and thus to violate dramatic conven- 
tions, is a very different thing from ignorantly 
writing undramatic scenes. We may properly 
enough debate whether Bernard Shaw be not un- 
dramatic in certain plays or parts of plays; it 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 249 

all depends upon what jou mean by undramatic. 
But it is absurd to claim that he is missing fire 
like an amateur. Right or wrong as to the re- 
sults, he knows the rules of the game, consciously 
alters or ignores them, chooses to do what he 
does, and takes the risks. This, it will be con- 
ceded, is quite other than to blunder along, and 
sometimes hit upon success. For in spite of the 
risks run and the unstagy things done, success 
frequently follows; too frequently to be an acci- 
dent. 

We shall never get down to the root of the 
matter until the fundamental question is faced: 
What is " action " on the stage? Persons a-plenty 
patronizingly drop a kind word for Shaw, because 
of his general cleverness, but sapiently add : " Of 
course, he has no action, you know ; but he's great 
fun, isn't he? " a remark somewhat hard to bear. 
" Action " to the Philistine means physical bus- 
tle, and nothing else; unless two or more persons 
demonstrate emotional arousement by jumping 
about a stage, the drama is at once dubbed dull. 
And the play becomes proportionately more 
" dramatic " as more persons are added, until 
the effect is that of a mob that shouts and surges 



250 BERNARD SHAW 

and perhaps tears down a house, to the sound 
of guns. But unfortunately for this primitive 
view, a Norwegian by the name of Ibsen has taught 
the theatre-going world that action may be a 
state within as well as a row without ; that two 
persons, Nora and Helmer, her husband, let us 
say, standing quietly together and talking in 
ordinary, every-day tones, may give us a sense 
of stressed emotional values in human life such 
as no frenzied mob at its highest howl can secure. 
Action, we now know pretty well, since it is fully 
illustrated by modern drama and gives that 
drama its chief significance, is anything on the 
stage that makes us to enter sympathetically into 
the psychologic tension of the stage folk whose 
fortunes engage us. And it is more and more 
the habit of current play-making of the better 
sort to show this " action '' with the quiet re- 
straint which throws emphasis upon states of 
mind and emotional crises, with a laudable desire 
not to overstep their modesty of nature. Mod- 
ern stage action, in a word, tends to become 
psychologic, rather than physical and acrobatic. 
Shaw, then, is full of action, if only there be 
conceded to that much-abused word a connotation 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 251 

which implies something besides door slamming 
and dextrous gyrations of the body. There is no 
true antithesis between talk and action; for the 
right kind of talk on the stage is the most tre- 
mendous action in the world to posit crisis, show 
character, and create climax. 

" Situation " is another favorite word with 
those who fall into the conventional chatter about 
the drama; without situation, no self-respecting 
play is supposed to survive the arrows of out- 
raged criticism. What is meant obviously by 
such a demand is that a play to be a play must 
at certain points commonly associated in modern 
dramaturgy with the fall of a curtain give an 
effect of increased tension, of arrived crisis ; that 
sharpening of story which is in its staccato quality 
peculiar to the stage in contrast with other forms 
of narrative. 

It is equally foolish to deny that in this re- 
spect Shaw's plays are richly supplied with sit- 
uations. One such, most original and effective, 
is the scene in the third act of " The Devil's Dis- 
ciple," where Dudgeon and the minister's wife 
discuss his deed in saving her husband's life, and 
to her bewildered astonishment he disclaims any 



252 BERNARD SHAW 

love for her. And in the same play another of 
first-class quality is the final trial scene. There 
are few finer situations on the English stage than 
that in " Candida," where the drame a trois cul- 
minates in the wife's choice between lover and 
husband; and greater still, as we saw, because of 
the nature of the scene, is that terrible confronta- 
tion in " Mrs. Warren's Profession " of mother 
by daughter, with its tragic issue for the former. 
Again, it is a situation of high value when, at the 
end of " Captain Brassbound's Conversion," the 
pseudo-pirate pleads for Lady Cicely's love; to 
which we may add the final curtain of " Man and 
Superman," the second act curtain of " Arms and 
the Man," and the central and only scene of 
"The Showing-up of Blanco Posnet." The 
death of the artist in act third of " The Doctor's 
Dilemma " is one of the most daringly novel and 
theatrically effective scenes in the range of mod- 
ern drama. The stage value of these and such 
others as every Shaw student will easily add, is 
so apparent as to make all the more strange the 
reiteration of the stupid statement that Shaw 
lacks action and instinct for stage effects. On 
the contrary, he has the instinct carefully forti- 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 253 

fied and fructified by much thought and labor both 
as critic and playwright, so that the trained 
hand and the cool craftsman's head cooperate 
and result in the grasp of dramatic material 
which means a capable theatre artist. In his best 
plays, growth, clash, and crisis, ever denotements 
of real drama, instead of the purely literary per- 
formances of would-be dramatists, are present; 
if we will but get rid of a too narrow understand- 
ing of dramatic requirements. 

The probable reason so many fail to see this 
capability in Shaw's technic, the power to ar- 
range story in appealing crescendo moments of in- 
cident and character, so that, chemically united, 
what is called climax is the result, is because this 
playwright subordinates situation to his deeper 
purposes of theme and characterization; subor- 
dinates, let me repeat, but not eliminates. He is, 
so to say, chary of it, only furnishing these popu- 
lar effects as they may be necessary to make a 
play which shall engage the attention of a gen- 
eral audience to his subject in hand. Thus he 
differs by the whole sky from dramatists like 
Scribe or Bernstein, to whom such effects are the 
principal aim, not an incident in a larger pur- 



254> BERNARD SHAW 

pose. Like Ibsen before him, he rather shuns too 
obvious " curtains," and prefers the illusion pro- 
duced by giving the broken rhythm of life instead 
of the too perfect symmetry of self-conscious 
theatre art. 

And it is interesting to realize that all the 
more credit goes to Shaw, the technician, for so 
often producing situations in the common mean- 
ing of the word, in that he boldly and contemptu- 
ously tramples on all the most sacred principles 
of psychology involved traditionally in those sit- 
uations. Thus, in the climax of " The DeviPs 
Disciple," Dudgeon, who, by immemorial stage 
law, should love the minister's fair spouse, and 
so explain his gallant conduct, coolly repudiates 
any such motive. And yet, this is as arresting 
as if he had obeyed the rules of the French tri- 
angle (of which the play makes fun), and drawn 
the unresisting lady to his breast. In the same 
fashion, Candida's choice is all the fresher and 
more sensational, in other words, of more stage 
value, because she chooses her husband in place 
of her lover ; too original, in truth, for the boule- 
vards. Shaw abandons all the tricks and char- 
acter turns which were believed to be invincible 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 255 

on the boards of a theatre, and makes the sup- 
posedly tame reverse still more exciting. It is 
hard not to admire such fortesse of handling. 

As a summary, one may say that Shaw has the 
genuine playwright's feeling for that one central 
scene around which the whole dramatic structure 
is built, towards which it naturally moves and 
from which it recedes when the main purpose is 
accomplished ; the obligatory scene, as Mr. Archer 
paraphrases the French term, which every true 
theatre artist knows he must give his audience to 
satisfy it, can generally be found in the represen- 
tative dramas of this writer ; and if absent, a rea- 
son is not lacking. Nothing insures the undra- 
matic quality of an alleged play more certainly 
than to substitute indirect narration for the direct 
showing of a thing important in the treatment. 
On the stage, seeing is believing, and to exhibit 
action instead of talking about it, is a funda- 
mental principle of both experience and com- 
mon sense. At first blush, it might appear that 
Shaw is an arch-sinner in this respect ; but such is 
not the case. In the first acts of " The Devil's 
Disciple " and " The Doctor's Dilemma," studied 
earlier, there is a deal of talk, we saw, preliminary 



256 BERNARD SHAW 

to the start of the story ; dialogue for the sake of 
" planting " character, to use the technical term, 
and to create atmosphere. But with the story 
under way, Shaw does not make the mistake ad- 
verted to above. Regularly, he lets the interaction 
of characters develop the plot; irregularly, he 
uses indirect statement in place of direct presenta- 
tion; but this when something is to be gained in 
so doing. " Captain Brassbound's Conversion " 
is a good play to study with this in mind. The 
off-stage occurrences in this drama, such as the 
presence of the United States ship in the harbor, 
are pregnant with consequences to the action, 
yet are twice as telling as if seen by the spectator. 
Throughout his dramas, Shaw exhibits a nice and 
well-nigh infallible appreciation of the differ- 
ence between expositional and suggestive off-stage 
material and that sort of narrative which means 
fiction instead of a play. There is no subtler test 
of technic than this. 

Closely allied with this mistake about Shaw's 
power in situation is that which denies him emo- 
tional quality. One smiles instinctively at this 
allegation, since emotionalism is so marked a trait 
of this writer as almost to deserve first mention. 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 257 

To be sure, he seems to be an intellect attacking 
the false and foolish emotions of others; but no 
one becomes more emotionally aroused or imparts 
more of the heat and light of such a state than 
this same writer. He is, above all, an incorrigible 
romanticist, shy of himself. What is really 
meant when, masking as a cold intellectualist, he 
is charged with a lack of heart and its corollary, 
too much head, is not that the emotion is absent 
but that it is of the wrong kind or out of place. 
There is, for example, immense emotional content 
and effect in the central scene referred to in " Mrs. 
Warren's Profession." It fairly quivers with feel- 
ing, white-hot and poignant. But the trouble is 
that this exhibition of mother and daughter at 
grapple is a destructive attack upon the usual 
sentimental depiction of this relation and this 
seems to confirmed sentimentalists cold and ab- 
horrent. In this sense, but in this sense only, the 
scene might be called unsympathetic and Vivie 
herself an intellectualized repellent character. 
In other words, we must carefully explain what 
emotion implies before deciding whether our 
dramatist commands it. If the term be used 
broadly enough to include aroused feeling with 



258 BERNARD SHAW 

regard to vital human activities and relations, 
then no writer for the stage, past or present, ex- 
cels Shaw in the power of emotional evocation. 
I spoke of the emotion being out of place, at 
times. In a scene already referred to as perhaps 
the most remarkable he ever conceived, that of 
the death of the artist in " The Doctor's Di- 
lemma," we get a good illustration. The words 
of Dubedat, as he bids good-bye to his wife and 
recites his wonderful credo, are a-pulse with pro- 
found feeling which calls forth a like feeling in 
the hearer. One recognizes that the dramatist is 
stirred to his depths. Yet it may well be doubted 
whether this scene, magnificent as it is for imagi- 
native suggestion, rich in emotional content, will 
ever be accepted as successful by a theatreful 
of folk, for reasons I have explained. 

One is Here reminded of Tolstoy's rebuke of 
Shaw, when the latter made a joking reference to 
a matter the Russian held sacred: it would per- 
haps be putting it fairly to say that Shaw lacks 
taste at times, both as an artist and man, in 
the sense that he does not enough consider what 
is a matter of reverence to others. He is deeply 
reverential about that which he reverences, but I 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 259 

think can be justly accused of riding roughshod 
over the similar feelings of others. Remember, I 
am considering the emotional quality of Shaw at 
this moment simply as an element which enters 
into the technical result and removes his work 
from that dry display of the intellect out of 
place in a playhouse. Technic must have emo- 
tional material to use as a very condition of its 
existence. 

Broadly speaking, no doubt Shaw, like Ibsen, 
uses the realistic method to tell his story and 
convey his theme. The folk of his fancy talk and 
act in the quiet key of external truth, whatever 
may be said of the purport of what they utter, 
or of the uniqueness of their psychology. Super- 
ficially viewed, they are of all stage people the 
most unromantic in the way they aim at the via 
media of daily life. Shaw is ever striving to create 
the illusion of reality. Critics would perhaps 
agree that in the denotements of speech, dress, and 
carriage he secures the desired effect in this fash- 
ion ; but would clash when it comes to the deeper 
truth of human character. To some, Shaw's char- 
acters are simply projections of Shaw, the play- 
wright himself talking behind a disguise more or 



260 BERNARD SHAW 

less thin; sometimes, as we noted in the case of 
Tanner, hardly a disguise at all. In the final at- 
tempt to place Shaw in contemporary drama as 
a literary force, I have attended to the question 
whether this dramatist has the higher creative 
power in characterization. Here, with technic in 
mind, let it be noted that, given his aim, his Active 
folk are skilfully done because they carry the 
double role of exponents of his theory yet seem- 
ingly real human beings. His so-called realism 
as a method properly applies to his manipulation 
of character and is a part of the technical use of 
his art. His dramatis personce appear to do 
things so odd, bizarre, or outrageous as to bring 
up the grave question of psychologic accuracy. 
Would Candida, we ask, turn to her husband when 
she makes her choice? Would Ann pursue the 
man of her selection with such unrelenting, all 
but awful oneness of purpose? Would the 
family in " You Never Can Tell " receive 
the long-lost father upon his return in so 
cold and critical a fashion? And would typi- 
cal young women of the day substitute eugenical 
considerations instead of the conventional emo- 
tional response to wooing? If we reply. No, then 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 261 

we must deny him the realism which is reality, 
not merely photography and superficial appear- 
ance. It may be conceded that at times Shaw, 
looking ahead and picturing the desirable Future 
rather than the faulty Present, uses the method 
of allegory — as does Ibsen — and by so much de- 
parts from the technic of pure realism. We 
should not forget his whimsical statement that 
he learned from Mozart to make all his characters 
geniuses. But it is, I believe, undeniable that by 
the most skilful painting of the physical sem- 
blances of humanity on the stage, Shaw secures 
for his puppets a credence, during the actual 
presentation of his play, such as might not upon 
analysis be accorded to m.en and women in life. 
And this is an achievement in artistry. 

The flexibility and experimental nature of 
Shaw's technic may be seen among other illustra- 
tions in his handling of the act division. He 
throws his theme into one, three, four, or five acts, 
as he pleases, according to the nature of the piece, 
its demand in the particulars of growth and 
pause and heightened effects. The texture and 
intention of his material alike come into the de- 
cision. " Getting Married," " The Showing-up 



262 BERNARD SHAW 

of Blanco Posnet," "The Man of Destiny," 
« How He Lied to Her Husband," " Press Cut- 
tings," and " The Dark Lady of the Sonnets " 
testify how often he has preferred the form that 
means a continuous performance, with time values 
varying from a half-hour to two hours, to the con- 
ventional playing time of a full-length drama. 
Several of his best plays are in the three-act 
form now favored by the skilled artisans of the 
stage. But " The Doctor's Dilemma " is in five 
acts, a form supposed to be obsolete (at least for 
realistic drama), and so are " Caesar and Cleo- 
patra " and " Pygmalion " ; while into four acts 
he has thrown several dramas, including " Man 
and Superman," " You Never Can Tell," and 
" Captain Brassbound's Conversion." Further 
examples of free handling may be noted in 
" Fanny's First Play," with its induction and 
epilogue, and in " Androcles and the Lion," 
where the material suggests chronicle history and 
the form becomes correspondingly plastic. This 
adaptation of form to substance indicates the 
genuine dramatist who creates a formula but 
does not allow it to bulldoze him into the slavish 
following of a model. 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 263 

Shaw is a pioneer in the one-act play, which 
is an interesting and significant development of 
modern drama, widening its possibilities, and af- 
fording some of the ablest playwrights of the day, 
— Barrie, Kennedy, Middleton, Sudermann, Zang- 
will, Strindberg, — the list might be made formida- 
ble, — to produce effects not so well secured in the 
full-length play. The one-acter is now slowly 
but, I imagine, surely gaining recognition in Eng- 
land and America, and has been for a longer time 
influential in Europe ; as where Strindberg, a mas- 
ter in this genre, presented in his own theatre 
in Stockholm many of the best examples of his 
own work. The work of the Irish Players in 
Dublin and on tour, and in America such com- 
panies as that once at The Princess and The 
Washington Square Players in New York, to- 
gether with the various Little Theatres of the 
country, have done much to bring vogue in Eng- 
lish-speaking lands to this form of drama. Shaw's 
influence in popularizing the play, long or short, 
without act division, is certainly considerable. 
That he appreciates the opportunity offered by 
this simplification of form can be seen in his note 
to " Getting Married." 



264, BERNARD SHAW 

As it involves this morphological question be- 
yond its application to the drama in hand, and 
throws light upon the dramatist's view, it is 
worth quoting here : " There is a point of some 
technical interest in this play. The customary 
division into acts has been disused, and a re- 
turn made to unity of time and space, as ob- 
served in the ancient Greek drama. In the fore- 
going tragedy, ' The Doctor's Dilemma,' there 
are five acts: the place is altered five times and 
the time is spread over an undetermined period 
of more than a year. No doubt the strain on the 
attention of the audience and on the ingenuity 
of the playwright is much less ; but I find in 
practice that the Greek form is inevitable when 
drama reaches a certain point in poetic and in- 
tellectual evolution. Its adoption was not, on 
my part, a deliberate display of virtuosity in 
form, but simply the spontaneous falling of a 
play of ideas into the form most suitable to it, 
which turned out to be the classical form. ' Get- 
ting Married,' in several acts, with the time 
spread over a long period, would be impossible." 

Here, it may be remarked, is the self-conscious 
craftsman meditating upon the subtleties of his 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 265 

craft, and doing nothing by accident. The defi- 
nite simphfication of form which has marked the 
changing drama of our day under Ibsen's influ- 
ence is a move towards the closer fitting of form 
to substance : given the emphasis upon psychology 
which that drama chose to exercise, and fewer 
acts, one scene, and fewer characters, were sure to 
follow. And the one-act form would seem to be 
logically the carrying out of this principle to its 
natural limit. 

Shaw has done more than anyone else to give 
literary quality to that part of a play which is 
outside the dialogue : the stage " business " and 
the descriptions of character. Of old, this was 
done in an hieroglyphic way, a species of linguistic 
arithmetic. " So-and-so comes down right, takes 
chair ; business of using handkerchief." This sort 
of jargon is not conducive to a mood which would 
like to regard a drama as a piece of literature, a 
part of belles lettres. And it is a sad blow to the 
illusion of story and picture. It is likely one of 
the reasons why the reading of stage plays, when 
printed, has not in the past been popular. Such 
reading is now rapidly becoming a habit because, 
among other reasons, the printed drama is not 



266 BERNARD SHAW 

offering these laconic algebraic symbols in place 
of the written-out speech which literature de- 
mands. In this change, Shaw is a leader. In- 
deed, nobody has done so much to improve the 
situation. As a literary man, with a bias for fit 
speech, he has made stage directions and charac- 
ter delineations " literary," given them expres- 
sional worth; and also added much to our under- 
standing of the psychology of his dramatic chil- 
dren. But in his zeal to remove technical and 
unpleasant details from a play in book form, he 
has allowed himself to fall into the danger of 
obtruding his own personality into the text, so 
that one receives the shock of hearing G. B. S. 
speak in the first person just as one was coming 
under the illusion of the scene and story. Still, 
the balance of gain is undoubtedly in favor of the 
reader; and the writer's influence in helping thus 
to rehabilitate the play by associating it with the 
reading habit and suggesting that it may be a 
part of literature, and the current drama thus be- 
come a recognized part of the great body of drama 
of past times, is a thing to be unfeignedly thank- 
ful for. 

But are they not reading rather than acting 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 267 

plays, after all, does some one ask? Shaw first 
sought his audience through the publication of 
his dramas, which could find no producer; did he 
not shape his work for such appreciation, and fail 
to fit it to the more practical tests of the stage? 
To this inquiry the answer is obvious. If we were 
obliged in honesty to say. Yes, Shaw's technic 
would instantly be involved. This dramatist 
would fall into the same class with Shelley, Ten- 
nyson, Swinburne, and Stevenson; great writers, 
but not strictly playwrights at all. 

It happens, however, that the contemporary 
world is finding out, with more or less naive sur- 
prise, that Shaw meets the theatre test and in 
fact is turning out to be one of the best acting 
dramatists of the British theatre. He has nicely 
fooled many of us in this way. Again and again, 
the student of Shaw will have read some drama of 
his before seeing it played, and made up his mind 
that while delightful to read, it was not suited to 
stage requirements ; only to ascertain that it was 
one of the best acting plays of the day. I con- 
fess to being misled by " You Never Can Tell," 
a reading of which did not by any means reveal 
the saliency of character and scene which makes 



268 BERNARD SHAW 

this farce comedy such an unchallenged success. 
No doubt others, if put into the confessional, 
could bear similar testimony. 

But does the fact that Shaw's dramas have a 
thesis injure them as vehicles for the stage, where 
technic in art and entertainment in aim unite to 
make good dramaturgy? We have already made 
the point that there is story so well as thesis 
in these productions ; more in " Fanny's First 
Play," certainly, and less in " Getting Married," 
according to the purpose or mood of the play- 
wright; nobody would find as much seriousness of 
intention in " How He Lied to Her Husband " 
and " Great Catherine " as in " Mrs. Warren's 
Profession " and " Candida." But predominantly, 
the didactics are mitigated by the genuine dra- 
matic qualities of entertainment; and, the proof 
of the pudding being in the eating, behold the box 
office result ! Nothing is surer than the statement 
that if Shaw were more preacher than dramatist, 
his plays would steadily fail. To be sure, he ad- 
dresses a special and happily fast-growing audi- 
ence; an audience which would desire civilized 
fun. He has dared to seek, and seeking has found, 
a public ready, even eager, for plays that dealt 



THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 269 

freshly, forcibly, honestly, and seriously with life ; 
and to this rapidly crystallizing body of theatre 
patrons his work is an intellectual tonic, and an 
esthetic pleasure. But let it be repeated, that 
over and above this audience naturally respond- 
ing to such a genius of the serious theatre, there 
are elements in Shaw's appeal which make him 
agreeable to the lighter section of the theatre- 
going public, which, while it mistakes his meaning 
and has but a parody of the man in mind, does 
buy seats for his " show " ! 

Yes, Shaw cut the Gordian knot by remaining 
intellectual without being dull. This is not to say 
that some of his dramas are not comparative 
failures. It is only to claim that for the most 
part Shavian stage stories amuse people gener- 
ally, and hold their place persistently as acting 
drama. And there could be, I insist, no higher 
tribute to Shaw as a craftsman in the playhouse. 
This is the supreme and ultimate test; that 
against heavy odds, and reversing an earlier opin- 
ion, the plays by Bernard Shaw are increasingly 
popular. Nothing but sound technic as a basis 
for this result could lead to such a result. The 
notion that Shaw succeeds in spite of defective 



270 BERNARD SHAW 

workmanship may be allowed to pass into that 
Walhalla where critical and other mistakes repent 
them of their earthly errors. His plays bristle 
with technical proof of stage knowledge; the 
avoidance of the soliloquy and aside, the careful 
motivation of all exits and entrances as part of 
the aim to preserve the integrity of character 
and plot; the sense of situation and climax; the 
cunning control of light and shade, whereby 
monotony of tone is escaped; and the wise free- 
dom with which, as I have tried to show, the dra- 
matic form has been modified to fit a fresh 
purpose ; all this offers evidence to the trained ob- 
server of a forthright technician and one of the 
truly original artists of the modern stage. 



CHAPTER X 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 

Every writer has a double significance. He 
may be regarded for his worth abstracted from 
any consideration of time and place, as we re- 
gard the indisputable masters like Homer, Dante, 
Shakspere. Or, confessedly perhaps of secondary 
importance compared with these, he may yet bulk 
large in the history of letters because of what 
he accomplished in the evolution of the literary 
form and movement of which he is a part. His 
value for his time, in this way, can be so great 
as to constitute him a major figure, whatever be 
his final fate, after the winnowing of Time has 
separated the wheat from the chaff. 

Contemporary judgment can never be sure of 
a writer's place and importance in himself apart 
from these relations to school and period: the 
story of literary criticism with its laughable mis- 
takes, its ironic reversal of opinions, has demon- 
strated that. But it is within the modest scope 
271 



272 BERNARD SHAW 

of the estimate that has not the advantage of 
time's perspective, to recognize certain relative 
values and catch the meaning of the individual 
author, his service in literary evolution. 

Shaw may be considered in this latter way, while 
we waive the ultimate question of permanent 
standing, a phrase, indeed, which is self-contra- 
dictory, as truly when we have Shakespere in mind 
as when we seek to indicate the rank of one still 
living; how do we know in the year of grace 1916 
that the greatest dramatist of them all will sur- 
vive the shocks of Time so that we may speak of 
his contribution as " permanent " ? We only 
know that he has successfully weathered the 
storms of three hundred years. 

The practical question then is, what impress 
has Bernard Shaw made upon the generation 
which, under the leadership of Ibsen, has con- 
tributed to the development of English-speaking 
drama? Is his place distinctive, important, has 
it significance? Has he contributed to make what 
we call modern drama in such manner as to in- 
fluence it in form and substance, in aim and accom- 
plishment? For one, I believe the answer must be 
an affirmative. 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 273 

But what is modern drama, since we must de- 
limit and define in order to see Shaw in his due 
relation to the interesting movement of which he 
is a part? 

A generation is usually taken to include a 
period of about thirty-five years. The drama that 
has been produced between 1880 and the present 
can be called distinctively modern and is the 
drama made by Ibsen and his contemporaries and 
followers, in Europe and the English-speaking 
lands. This movement is definite and means, 
broadly speaking, a more serious attempt to con- 
sider life in the theatre, to make the drama 
thoughtful; and to use a technic which is the 
logical form for plays that draw nearer to life 
and emphasize psychology as a central interest 
for dramatist and audience alike. A type of play 
has thus been evolved which, whatever its loss on 
the side of poetry and the attraction deriving 
from so-called literary excellence, has gained 
greatly in reality and truth; has permanently 
contributed to dramatic literature certain quali- 
ties of force, insight, and democratic sympathy; 
and at times has brought forth masterpieces whose 
effect as works of art has been to communicate 



274. BERNARD SHAW 

the illusion of truth in dealing with modern 
life. 

In this shaping of the play under modern con- 
ditions and with modern aims, Ibsen beyond all 
question is the leader; as significant for our time 
as Shakspere was for his. He gave modern 
technic its formula and made the playhouse a 
place where the great social themes now natur- 
ally engaging attention might be discussed. Nor 
did he in so doing turn the stage into a pulpit; 
for his dramas were essentially stories told with 
the skill necessary to make them theatre material. 
Stern as may be the view, and polemic as are some 
of the theses, Ibsen did not show himself as first 
the preacher and second the playwright, but in 
the trained opinion of Europe, as above all else, 
first, last, and all the time, a literary force, an 
artist who usedthe stage form of story. 

In the revolutionary nature of his technic, the 
seriousness of his themes, and the seemingly de- 
structive quality of his social criticism, Shaw is 
the foremost follower of the Scandinavian on 
English soil. The differences between them are 
many and wide ; it would be utterly misleading to 
say that the Irishman imitates Ibsen ; for no man 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 275 

is more himself, keenly sensitive as he nevertheless 
is to the social thought currents of our day. But 
there is, when all reservations are made, a funda- 
mental fellowship between the two : both are critics 
of societ}^, realists in method, individualists in at- 
titude and teaching, and technicians who boldly 
adapt the stage traditions to their particular 
kind of endeavor. 

In this sense, and without the unfair generali- 
zation which allows for no personal dissimilarity, 
it is not amiss to describe Shaw as the English 
Ibsen. And there can be no question, I believe, that 
his position in the school which has grown up on 
English ground is of like importance. He is not 
only the most brilliant satiric dramatist who uses 
English speech during the period under discussion, 
but the most influential. He has been a pioneer, 
I have suggested, in giving prominence to the 
idea of the printed play as a part of letters ; and 
his plays have been so printed as to make the 
important distinction between a stage drama re- 
produced, shorthand direction and all, in book 
form, and the same play so printed as to be 
pleasurable reading because intelligently aimed at 
the reading public, and accompanied by prefaces 



276 BERNARD SHAW 

that are in themselves worthy pieces of critical 
literature about the stage and its children. 

Shaw in his themes and his way of handling 
those themes has also pointed out the path of 
freedom to his contemporaries. At a moment 
when it was daring to do so, and spelled defeat, 
he introduced unpleasant and unpopular topics 
upon the stage, and instead of allowing himself 
to be discouraged by the cold reception, or lack 
of reception at all, stalwartly stuck by his guns 
and waited for an audience to grow up to him ; in 
this respect, offering a sharp contrast with other 
playmakers, including some very well-known ones, 
who, beginning with ideas and the desire to do 
worthy work, serious in intention and unusual in 
character, found it to their advantage to aban- 
don such an advanced position and preferred to 
win immediate favor by catering to the mob. Shaw 
from the very first had the courage of his con- 
victions, and nearly starved before forcing his 
day to give him a hearing. His services in mak- 
ing free speech concerning vital topics possible 
upon the English-speaking stage are so unique 
that it is highly likely his significance in this re- 
gard will be an increasing element in the lasting 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 277 

place he will take in our dramatic evolution. No 
better way to remove the absurdity of an in- 
competent censor can be devised than to have him 
forbid the presentation of such plays as " Mrs. 
Warren's Profession " and " The Showing-up of 
Blanco Posnet." Such action is its own worst 
enemy. 

This dramatist has also performed a definite 
service in establishing the fact that our stage 
can be serious in intent, so far as the nature of 
the subject-matter and aim of the author are 
concerned, without giving up the specific object 
of the theatre to entertain its patrons. 

It is Shaw's peculiar gift and therefore his 
distinctive service, to use the playhouse for serious 
discussion without being dull ; a fact amply illus- 
trated in the previous discussions. It is not the 
intellectuals alone who appreciate and applaud 
him, but the general theatre public ; a public car- 
ing little or nothing about his ideas or reforma- 
tory purposes, but reacting gladly to his wit and 
humor, his flair for character, his genius for story 
and situation. He kills two birds with one stone 
because of the ambidextrous way in which he thus 
wins the approbation of gallery and dress circle 



278 BERNARD SHAW 

alike. His plays, often spoken of by commercial 
managers as if they were the temporary fad or 
pose of the elect, are in reality popular in the 
democratic use of the word. These facts rebut 
the assertion that Shaw's dramas are not really 
dramas at all, but stage discussions. If a stage 
story be an interesting grouping of a number of 
human beings around the centralizing magnet of 
an idea, then our dramatist usually gives his pa- 
trons a story; and to carry it, he furnishes out 
of a very remarkable creative fecundity a large, 
distinct, and enjoyable number of characters em- 
bracing most of the types of English folk to be 
observed in the length and breadth of modern 
Great Britain. That these characters are salient, 
vivid, and highly amusing and arresting can 
hardly be denied. 

It is important in the attempt to settle Shaw's 
position in modern drama to answer the question : 
Has he the power of genuine character creation 
and projection? Here is a fundamental test of 
any dramatist. For, if the answer be in the 
affirmative, then he takes his place among the 
playwrights who are something more ; masters of 
life, interpreters of human beings to the masses 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 279 

of mankind. Such artists wear the purple by 
right; they are of the tribe of Shakspere and 
Moliere and Ibsen. Is it not true both for novel- 
ist and stage story-teller that this is the question 
of questions : that it is their highest function to 
make us see, know, and be deeply influenced by the 
Active creatures of their imagination who yet pos- 
sess more of verity for us than the flesh-and-blood 
persons whom we daily meet in the dream called 
Life? 

In considering Shaw's rank, then, such a search- 
ing matter must be grappled with, looking to his 
final award. It is frequently asserted that Ber- 
nard Shaw's stage figures are not human beings 
at all, but merely projections of his own indi- 
viduality; clothes-horses upon which to hang his 
whimsies and crotchets ; brilliant, galvanized pup- 
pets, not reproductions of the actualities of life 
recognizable as " true to experience " : a phrase 
which means — so far as it means anything — the 
traits and actions which square with our more or 
less limited observation and knowledge of the 
world of men. This is a charge which has also 
been made, and j>erhaps always will be made 
against the fictive creatures of Charles Dickens; 



280 BERNARD SHAW 

a charge somewhat puzzling to sustain, inasmuch 
as that novelist, whether his men and women are 
veritable or not, manages to make them of lasting 
reality in the affectionate memories of mankind. 
The most ardent adherent of our dramatist is 
not likely to claim unreservedly that he stands 
with the greatest in the portrayal of character. 
But it is quite possible to concede this, without 
the extreme of declaring that behind his men and 
women in general, stalks G. B. S. in a more or 
less thin disguise: the mask of sex, or social con- 
dition or type. I do not think that there is 
either perception of his quality or justice to his 
achievements in such assertion. The writer who 
has conceived and embodied William the waiter, 
Mrs. Warren and Vivie, Dick Dudgeon, Candida, 
Lady Cicely, Napoleon and Casar, Doyle, Drink- 
water, Jack Tanner and Ann, Barbara, Blanco 
Posnet, and Dubedat, — these a few, where the 
number extended to meet personal variations of 
preference might be indefinitely increased, — can- 
not be accused of a failure to add to the Eng- 
lish portrait gallery some distinctive and suc- 
cessful figures. If they seem non-human at first 
meeting, it may be well to ask ourselves if we have 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 281 

not been made accustomed in the consulship of 
Plancus to conventionalized patterns of men and 
women rather than to very humanity. Perhaps 
part of our debt to Shaw lies in the fact that he 
has forced us to see and get wonted to stage per- 
sons who, like their counterparts in life, are 
a curious bundle of contradictions ; the dramatist 
thus broadening the gamut of stage painting. 
The allecration that Shaw's characters are unreal 
I suspect to be as unsound as the allegation that 
his plays are nothing but talk. At least, it will 
be good physic for our ego to cherish the thought 
that inability to recognize Shaw's stage creatures 
may be due not to their being out of drawing but 
to some defect in our vision. 

To be more specific : this writer draws historical 
personages like Napoleon and Csesar, and rudely 
disturbs the conventional conception of these 
worthies. Is this merely an attempt to wrest 
amusement out of some of the stock material of 
history, to the result of an effect of fresh han- 
dling of somewhat shop-worn figures? It might 
easily be so taken, and often is. But it were wiser 
to see that such rehabilitation is in the service of a 
perfectly sober theory on Shaw's part: namely, 



282 BERNARD SHAW 

he is of the opinion that the usual representation 
of a man like Caesar, world-conqueror and author 
of the " Commentaries," quite hides the rather im- 
portant fact that he was a human being: and in 
the play which deals with him he endeavors to ex- 
plain Csesar by humanizing him. The real man 
had been lost in the Et tu Brute pose. Shaw tries 
to motivate one whom we know through a few 
unsatisfactory external incidents and acts. 
Whether he brings us nearer to the real Caesar 
is not primarily the question: the aim is worthy, 
and the method, it would seem, sound: for with- 
out consistent motivation, historical characters 
sink into hopeless figureheads: become what 
George Washington became to countless school 
children, the man who could not tell a lie ; in other 
words, an unbelievable spook. How it warms 
Washington for us if we only hear some one say 
that he could lie, but refused to do so! We be- 
gin not only to believe in him, but to admire him. 
Those who in declaring that the Father of his 
Country could not tell a lie sought to do him a 
service, overlooked the sufficiently patent fact that 
it is exactly the way to kill all interest in his 
character or even existence. Yet no less an his- 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 283 

torian than Bancroft solemnly sets down the 
statement that Washington could no more depart 
from truth than a star from its orbit. One can 
but wonder if the youngest schoolboy will swal- 
low that. If he do, he must be profoundly dis- 
couraged at the information. It really would 
seem as if in the older treatment of the immortal 
George, the function of history were to make 
Americanism a myth and patriotism a nuisance. 

At least, then, we must distinguish between 
Shaw creating monstrosities, mere projections of 
himself, and Shaw widening the range of stage 
characters by refusing to be confined to the well- 
worn categories : the " leads," " heavies," and 
" juveniles " of tradition. 

At bottom, it is a question of creation. If such 
characters are shells into which personal theories 
can be poured, and are made by their begetter 
for that purpose, then they cannot ring true as 
genuine characterization. We see them through 
an historical glass, darkly. 

And so in the dramatist's handling of hu- 
manity, whether historical or fictive, we have to 
ask ourselves if we are not confusing truth and 
tradition. 



284 BERNARD SHAW 

If this idea that Shaw's stage people are possi- 
bly truer than the stage convention and nearer 
life just because they seem oddly different be a 
sound one, then logically his characters will gain 
in credence and acceptability as time familiarizes 
us with them and a broader, deeper conception of 
what human beings really are creeps gradually 
into art. At present, it is, I imagine, temperate 
to say that Shaw has given the world many 
salient, enjoyable studies of modern types and 
made them live as veritable flesh-and-blood crea- 
tures and not mere skeletons upon which to hang 
the trappings of his Shavian notions. 

It will, with less probable objection, be granted 
that the dialogue through which these stage folk 
are revealed is of high literary excellence: in in- 
cisive attraction and the effect of truth, the veri- 
similitude which produces the illusion of reality. 
One reason why plays like " She Stoops to Con- 
quer " and " The School for Scandal " hold the 
boards today is because the language in which 
they are written is of genuine worth: they are 
not only good acting plays but pieces of literature, 
as we say. And it is exactl}^ so with Shaw's : they 
stand the test of reading and re-reading. How 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 285 

many plays do? Bernard Shaw is a conspicuous 
and important dramatist today for the very 
good reason, though by no means the only one, 
that he has style: his manner of writing is his 
own, and possesses distinction and a happy idio- 
matic freshness. He is, quite independent of be- 
ing a dramatist, one of the few admirable and 
sound writers of the day. 

With characterization and dialogue to his credit, 
we may add that he has a gift, over and above all 
that industry can do to develop it, for the dra- 
matic nexus of a story blossoming in scene and 
situation: and we might define a situation as a 
scene at its tensest moment of interest. All the 
reiterated careless talk about Shaw's having no 
theatre sense for curtains and climaxes is comi- 
cally erroneous, as I trust the discussion of the 
dramas in sequence has shown; it overlooks his 
constant and brilliant control and manipulation 
of the raw material of the theatre in such wise as 
to give us scenes of all but unexampled power. 
Even in a play like " Getting Married," which 
might be named as the least dramatic of his reper- 
tory, when we have listened straight through to 
the vivid battledore and shuttlecock of an argu- 



286 BERNARD SHAW 

merit which curiously neither tires nor bores, is 
not the scene when the mayoress turns mystic 
one that has very great stage value — allowing, of 
course, for the genre of the piece, namely, satiric 
high comedy? When the curtain rings up on the 
first act of " You Never Can Tell " we saw that 
the very use of the dentist's office furnishes proof 
positive that here is a playwright, like the late 
Clyde Fitch in this respect, with an instinctive 
feeling for stage effectivism in the use of daringly 
homely, fresh matter, hitherto dodged by the ex- 
perts of the playhouse. 

The common idea that a grave defect in Shaw's 
equipment as playwright is to be found in his lack 
of emotional quality is based on a narrow and 
false traditional conception of the use of the hu- 
man emotions in drama. When emotion is spoken 
of in this view, what is meant is sex emotion of a 
a sort, and that not the best. 

With his fervently held faith in those relations 
of sex based upon sympathies of the mind and 
spirit rather than upon the appeal of the senses, 
he has not in thirty plays for one moment striven 
for attention or approval by so presenting men 
and women under the influence of what is euphe- 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 287 

mistically called " love " as to feed the appetite 
for the suggestive, the sensualistic, or the pas- 
sional. A dramatist who foregoes all the oppor- 
tunities offered by this twiddling upon sex har- 
monics can certainly be said to have the courage 
of his convictions: he abandons instantly and 
forever that motive of appeal and applause which 
is infinitely the most telling with any general 
audience. 

But he also foregoes this chance in the higher 
ranges of sex relations : scenes of tenderness, lofty 
sentiment, and sublimated passion are equally ab- 
sent from his work ; and that this abstention limits 
his power and cripples his effect may be granted. 
I would not for a moment wish to deny that some 
of the finest exhibitions of human psychology are 
lost to the d^^namics of the theatre by this instinct 
and attitude of Shaw's; for it is both. He is so 
seized with the idea that a pseudo-romantic con- 
ception of each other has worked havoc with men 
and women in the world, that his reaction from 
the conventional treatment of sex leads him into 
an extreme that is hardly natural to his tempera- 
ment, which is obviously not cool a^d calculating 
in such matters, but perfervid and^ — he will take 



288 BERNARD SHAW 

it hard of me for saying it once more — sensitively 
sentimental. The result is that he sternly ban- 
ishes the soft and melting passages of the central 
passion of mankind from his scenes. Nor is he 
himself unaware of this weakness of his, as he 
would, intellectually, regard it, for he makes 
open fun of himself in the person of John Tanner. 
Tanner is humorously clear-eyed as to his in- 
fatuation for Ann, and while his judgment, his 
reason, rebels that he should be made part of the 
life-force in this humiliatingly traditional fash- 
ion, his heart moves him to take her in his arms 
and be happy. 

If, however, for sex love in the usual sense we 
substitute love in various of the broader meanings 
of this exasperatingly protean word, we shall find 
this dramatist emotionally powerful and be forced 
to release him from the charge of being cold 
and intellectual at the expense of the warmer ap- 
peals of dramatic representation. The emotional 
value, for instance, involved in and displayed by 
the relations of Vivie and her mother is tremen- 
dous. And we certainly miss the point if we fail 
to see that the very fact of John Tanner's satiri- 
cally humorous arraignment of Ann in " Man and 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 289 

Superman " makes all the stronger the genuine 
passion with which he succumbs to her at the end. 
The whole relation, too, of Candida to March- 
banks, a relation offering hitherto unexplored re- 
gions to the playwright, is surcharged with emo- 
tional connotations that make the play most ex- 
citing to the perceptive auditor. No man so capa- 
ble as Shaw of leviathan noble rages and loft}^ 
enthusiasms could fail to put into his depictions of 
humanity the swift-flowing red blood of belief and 
protest and prayer. It would be far nearer the 
truth to maintain the thesis that in his plays in 
general he is too emotional for his own good; 
meaning that he cares so much for the ideas back 
of his fables that, unlike Moliere, it tinges his 
treatment with a polemic bias that injures its 
artistic quality. To this, the defender of Shaw 
might well reply that even granting the assump- 
tion, his representations have the story interest 
and the dramatic clinch which hold the attention 
and create pleasure: and that this result justi- 
fies the means. 

But in estimating the position of a writer, it 
surely is not sufficient to credit him with excellence 
in the handling of the form he chooses to cast 



290 BERNARD SHAW 

his thought in, nor to acknowledge the pleas- 
ure to be derived from his presentation. The 
thought itself, as a personal reaction to life, 
and in the end as a contribution, destructive or 
constructive, to the slow shaping of human des- 
tiny which works out through the machinery 
we call society, must be at bottom of decisive 
moment in the award Time shall give him. The 
personality of Shaw is, as our scrutiny of his 
work has made apparent, piquant and arresting; 
and his manner of unfolding it in drama has added 
to the joy of nations. But is his thought, when 
we strive to detach it from the manner of presen- 
tation, of such validity and vitality as to endure 
the wear and tear of Time? That is a question 
that goes deeper, and cannot be dodged by any 
author who would claim serious consideration. 

That Shaw is not a philosopher in the sense 
that he has evolved a synthesized general view of 
things, has been shown in former chapters, in the 
course of the study of him as social thinker and 
mystic poet. I have suggested that the literary 
artist as such is never the philosopher, first and 
foremost; for the moment he becomes a philoso- 
pher first, he ceases to be a literary force. Con- 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 291 

sider Tolstoy. Few, if any, writers have been 
both. Either the philosopher has crowded out the 
artist, or the reverse has happened. But the 
artist can be full of philosophical suggestiveness, 
and often is ; Goethe occurs to me as a noble ex- 
ample. In the same way, Bernard Shaw, tingling 
with his feeling for the intellectual currents of our 
era, intensely alive to the trend of modern evo- 
lution, has packed his work up to the gunwales 
with seemingly unsafe and therefore contra- 
band goods and as a sort of independent cruiser 
upon modern seas made it lively for ships of the 
regular lines. He has forced them to do some 
quick sailing and perhaps lower the record of 
ocean liners, which is a service. And I believe he 
prefers this almost piratical sailing for the ad- 
vantage it gives him of unrestraint and freedom. 
And if it be correct to see Shaw primarily as 
a literary force, doing all the better work because 
he refuses to have the ponderous consistency of 
the cut-and-dried philosopher, then the question 
whether his thought is sound or not becomes sec- 
ondary so far as awarding him his position is 
concerned. This is always true. If a writer re- 
flect important issues of his day with force, con- 



2p2 BERNARD SHAW 

viction, and a personal attractiveness, he will 
survive in all probability, whatever may be the 
fate of his creed or theory. The belief, the style 
that was its honest embodiment, will remain, 
long after the views, judged as to their accepta- 
bility, have been thrown to the junk heap. Mil- 
ton's " Paradise Lost " is still the greatest Eng- 
lish, epic, although we smile tolerantly at its 
theology, which now appears not only jejune but 
puerile. Shakspere himself is not valued three 
hundred years after his death for his intellectual 
attitudes or aspects, but is stronger than ever 
as our first expressionist and painter of human 
life. Shaw's own words, in his letter to his friend, 
Mr. Walkley, may be turned on himself here: 
" He who has nothing to assert has no style and 
can have none: he who has something to assert 
will go as far in power of style as its momentous- 
ness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove 
his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains. 
Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job 
nor of Handel than Martin Luther destroyed the 
style of Giotto. All the assertions get disproved 
sooner or later; and so we find the world full of 
a magnificent debris of artistic fossils, with the 



SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 293 

matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out of them, 
but the form still splendid." 

Wise words and true, and entirely applicable to 
the man who wrote them. Nietzsche is not a con- 
structive philosopher but a brilliant literary 
power ; Ibsen is not a philosopher and by his own 
statement did not wish so to be taken. Browning 
is not a philosopher, pace the societies founded 
in his name and assuming that his function was to 
give us nuts to crack. Shaw gives us much to 
think about, and is of great value to suggest, 
stimulate, clarify, pique. And since he does these 
things in a way to be highly enjoyable he takes 
his place as a literary force, and now and in the 
future is to be studied as such. The claim that 
he is a later Moliere may be an excessive one ; but 
certainly he performs for his day and generation 
very much the same service which the greatest 
dramatist of France performed for his; namely, 
to correct morals with a smiling mouth, castigat 
mores ridendo: and to say more than this, either 
of Moliere or Shaw, were to set them in another 
category than that occupied by the makers of 
literature. A challenging, vital thinker, a keen 
and fascinating wielder of words, a skilled shaper 



294 BERNARD SHAW 

of story in dramatic mould, a modern critic with 
a passion for social betterment, who lives up to 
his belief, and is aspirational in his social dream, 
it does not seem likely that when the dust of com- 
bat clears away from around a figure whose nat- 
ural place is the arena, we shall fail to see him, 
still fighting, fighting ever on, though the cause 
be long since lost and won ; an enheartening spec- 
tacle, as the sight of an honest fighter for a thing 
worth fighting for must always be. Later gen- 
erations may even see Shaw plainer than do we: 
such reversals are the commonplace of history. 
But in any event, it is a little difficult at present 
to imagine him as supine and still; one finds it 
easier to hear him cry, with Browning: 

" / was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
The best and the last I " 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The non-dramatic writings of Shaw are volu- 
minous and no list of them need be given in con- 
nection with this study of the playwright. They 
include five pieces of fiction, two volumes of 
dramatic criticism, and various books of essay 
and criticism, of which " The Quintessence of 
Ibsen " is noteworthy. Much of Shaw's best 
thought in the field of economics and sociology is 
to be found in his contributions to " The Fabian 
Essays." The Prefaces to the plays contain a 
large and valuable part of his opinions not alone 
upon drama and the theatre, but concerning 
things in general: they are his explicit critical 
view which in the plays themselves is more or 
less concealed in the story. 

A full list of the dramas in the order of their 
composition follows : 

Widowers' Houses, 1885-92. 
The Philanderer, 1893. 
Mrs. Warren's Profession, 1893. 
Arms and the Man, 1894. 
Candida, 1894. 

You Never Can Tell, 1895-6-7. 
295 



296 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Man of Destiny, 1895. 
The Devil's Disciple, 1896-7- 
Caesar and Cleopatra, 1898. 
Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 1898-9. 
The Admirable Bashville, 1902-3. 
Man and Superman, 1903-4. 
John Bull's Other Island, 1904. 
How He Lied to Her Husband, 1904. 
Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction, 1905. 
Major Barbara, 1905. 
The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906. 
The Interlude at The Playhouse, 1907. 
Getting Married, 1908. 
The Sho wing-up of Blanco Posnet, 1909- 
Press Cuttings, 1909- 
Misalliance, 1909-10. 
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, 1910. 
Fanny's First Play, 1910-11. 
Androcles and the Lion, 1912. 
Overruled, 1912. 
Pygmalion, 1912. 
Great Catherine, 1913. 
The Music Cure, 1913. 

O'Flaherty, V. C, 1915 (unproduced and unpub- 
lished). 



INDEX 



Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 147, 
187 

Aberdeen, 66 

Actors' Orphanage, 119 

Adelphi Terrace, 30, 231 

"Admirable Bashville, The: 
or Constancy Unre- 
warded," 106-107 

Albany, N. Y., 89 

American Academy of Dra- 
matic Arts, 82 

" Androcles and the Lion," 
28, 84., 164, 167-173, 176, 
247, 262 

Androcles, in " Androcles 
and the Lion," 171, 172, 
248 

Ann, in "Man and Super- 
man," 78, 109, 110, 112, 
113, 179, 260, 280, 288 

Archer, William, dramatic 
critic, and Shaw, 24, 119, 
164, 255 

" Areopagitica, The," 153 

"Arms and the Man," 58- 
65, 66, 96, 123, 252 

Arnold, Matthew, 211 

Art, liberty in, 153, 163 

Asquith, Lord, in " Press 
Cuttings," 155 

" Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table, The," 134 

Avenue Theatre, 58 

Ayot St. Lawrence, 30 

Bacon, Sir Francis, 150 
Balsquith, in " Press Cut- 
tings," 156 



Balzac, 201 

Bancroft, 283 

Banger, Mrs., in " Press Cut- 
tings," 154 

Barbara in "Major Bar- 
bara," 121, 122, 123, 124, 
125, 127, 128, 280 

Barker, Granville, 160, 167, 
168, 246 

Barrie, J. M., 72, 103, 173, 
263 

Bentley (Bunny), in "Mis- 
alliance," 158, 159, 160 

Bergson, 222, 230 

Berkeley Lyceum, N. Y., 74, 
82 

Berlin, 58, 82, 89, 167, 176 

Berliner Theater, 89 

Bernstein, 253 

Bijou Theatre, 89 

Blanche, in " Widowers' 
Houses," 44, 45 

Blanco, in " The Showing-up 
of Blanco Posnet," 149, 
150, 151, 152, 219, 220, 223, 
280 

"Blanco Posnet, The Show- 
ing-up of," 147-153, 219, 
252, 261, 277 

Bleecker Hall, Albany, 89 

Bluntschli, in " Arms and 
the Man," 59, 61, 63, 64 

Bobby, in " Fanny's First 
Play," 165, 166 

Brassbound, Captain, 102, 
104, 105 

Bret Harte, 148 

Brieux, Eugene, 12, 56, 94 



297 



298 



INDEX 



Britisher, Shaw's typical, 87, 
118 

Broadbent, in " John Bull's 
Other Island," 115, 116, 
208 

Browning, Robert, 229, 293, 
294 

Brussels, 67 

Bunny (Bentley) in "Mis- 
alliance," 158, 159, 160 

Bunyan, 151 

Burgess, in " Candida," 72 

Burgoyne, General, in " The 
Devil's Disciple," 94 

Byron, 111 

"Caesar and Cleopatra," 84, 
95-100, 227, 262 

Caesar, in "Caesar and Cleo- 
patra," 96, 97, 98, 99, 227, 
231, 280, 281, 282 

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 177, 
182 

Candida, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 
75, 254, 260, 280, 289 

"Candida," 9, 27, 31; ana- 
lyzed, 66-74; 75, 76, 77, 
80, 96, 123, 230, 231, 244, 
245, 252, 268 

" Captain Brassbound's Con- 
version," 77, 82; 100-105, 
252, 256, 262 ' 

Carlyle, 5, 7, 31 

Carpenter, Edward, 20 

" Cashel Byron's Profes- 
sion," 106 

Catherine, in "Arms and 
the Man," 61 

Catherine of Russia, in 
" Great Catherine," 183, 
184 

Celt, a generic term, 16 

Censorship of plays, Shaw 
on, 6; 147, 187, 277 

Charteris, in "The Philan- 
derer," 47 

"Cherry Orchard," 246 



Chesterton, on Shaw, 151; 
186 

Chicago, 46 

" Chocolate Soldier, The," 
65 

Christian Science, 136 

Christians, 169, 170, 172 

Church, The, 208 

Civic and Dramatic Guild, 
The, 153 

Clandon, in " You Never Can 
Tell," 78 

Cleopatra, in " Caesar and 
Cleopatra," 97, 99 

Collins, in "Getting Mar- 
ried," 141, 143 

Comedy Theatre, N. Y., 163 

" Commentaries," Caesar's, 
282 

Congreve, 42 

"Connecticut Yankee at the 
Court of King Arthur," 
185 

Copyright Laws, English, 
106 

Corbett, James J., 106 

Court Theatre, 46, 82, 114, 
120, 129 

Crampton, in " You Never 
Can Tell," 81 

Crane, Stephen, 64 

Craven, in "The Philan- 
derer," 48 

Criterion Theatre, 100, 163 

Critics, Dramatic, 164, 240,- 
241, 259 

Croydon, 82 

Cuthbertson, in "The Phi- 
landerer," 48 

"Cymbeline," 48 

Daily Mail, London, 139 
Daly, Arnold, 67 
Daly's Theatre, N. Y., 106 
" Damaged Goods," 12 
Daniels, Elder, in " Blanco 
Posnet," 150, 220 



INDEX 



299 



Dante, 271 

"Dark Lady of the Son- 
nets, The," 160-162, 262 
Darwin, 19, 217, 292 
Denshawai Horror, The, 118 
Deutsches Theater, Berlin, 

58, 129 
"Devil's Disciple, The," 89- 

95; 96, 123, 139, 148, 151, 

221, 248, 251, 254, 255 
Dick, see Dudgeon 
Dickons, 72, 85, 159, 182, 279 
Divorce, Marriage and, 141- 

146 
"Doctor's Dilemma, The," 

46, 129-139, 232, 252, 255, 

258, 262, 264 
Don Juan, in "Man and 

Superman," 111, 223 
Doolittle, in "Pygmalion," 

182 
Dora, in "Fanny's First 

Play," 165, 166 
Doyle, 280 
Drama, the modern, Shaw 

in, 271 
Dresden, 66 
Drinkwater, in " Capt. 

Brassbound's Conversion," 

104, 280 
Dubedat, in "The Doctor's 

Dilemma," 130, 232, 258, 

280 
Dublin, 8; Shaw's life in, 17- 

18, 263 
Dudgeon, Dick, in "The 
• Devil's Disciple," 90-94, 

221, 251, 254, 280 
Duke of York's Theatre, 

The, 173 

Edison Telephone Company, 

19 
Edith, in " Getting Married," 

142 
Elder Daniels, see Daniels 
Eliot, George, 1, 151, 207 



Eliza, in "Pygmalion," 178 
180, 181, 182 

Elizabeth, Queen, 161, 162, 
184 

Elizabethan dramatists criti- 
cised, 107 

Elliot, Gertrude, 96 

Emerson, 128, 218, 219, 229 

Empire Theatre, N. Y., 82, 
100 

English art ideals, 99 

English, see Britisher 

Ervine, Mr., 187 

Essie, in "The Devil's Dis- 
ciple," 90 

Eugenics, 72, 160, 193, 195, 
198, 199, 235 

Eugenists satirized, 73, 160 

Evolution, Doctrine of, 216 

Eynsford-Hills, Mrs., in 
"Pygmalion," 182 

Fabian creed, 23, 190; policy, 
194 

Fabian Essays, 24 

Fabian Society, founded, 22 

Family life, 171, 200 et seq. 

"Fanny's First Play," 31, 
162-167, 177, 223, 243, 262, 
268 

Farrell, Mrs., in " Press Cut- 
tings," 155, 156 

Feemv, in " The Showing-up 
of * Blanco Posnet," 150, 
220 

Ferrovius, 170 

Fitch, Clyde, 286 

Forbes-Robertson, Sir John- 
ston, 96 

France, Shaw's vogue in, 3 

Frank, in "Mrs. Warren's 
Profession," 50, 51, 53 

Frankenstein, 181 

Freddy, in " Pygmalion," 
179,^182 

French triangle, 254 

Freud, 222 



300 



INDEX 



Galsworthy's "Justice," 54 
Garden Theatre, N. Y., 77 
Gardiner, in " Mrs. Warren's 

Profession," 51 
Garrick Theatre, N. Y., 49, 

114 
Gaul, 228 

George, Grace, 101, 120 
George, Henry, influence up- 
on Shaw, 20, 22, 192 
George, Mrs., in "Getting 

Married," 141, 143, 146, 

224-226, 286 
Germany, Shaw's vogue in, 3 
"Getting Married," 28, 46, 

140-46, 195, 224, 244, 245, 

261, 263, 268, 285 
"Ghosts," 49 
Gibney, Mrs., in " Fanny's 

First Play," 166 
Giotto, 292 
Giuseppi, in "The Man of 

Destiny," 88 
Gloria, in " You Never Can 

Tell," 78, 81 
Goethe, 291 
Grace, in " The Philanderer," 

47, 49 
"Great Catherine," 84, 183- 

185, 243, 268 
Greek drama, 264 
Grein's Independent T'heatre 

movement, 26 

Haeckel, 217 

HaflBgan, in "John Bull's 

Other Island," 115, 116 
Hale, Professor Edward 

Everett, 149 
Hammersmith, 89 
Hammon's book on Shaw, 3, 

121 
Handel, 292 
Hapgood, Norman, 76 
Haymarket Theatre, 141, 

158, 160 
"Healer, The," 135 



Heine, 11 

Helden, 58 

Helmer, in "A Doll's 
House," 250 

Henderson, Dr., Shavian 
biographer, 15, 50, 75, 77, 
108, 230, 243 

Her Majesty's Theatre, 176 

Herald Square Theatre, N. 
Y., 58 

Hero, The, satirized, 59-60, 
202 

Herrick's novel, 135 

Higgins, in " Pygmalion," 
178-182 

Holmes, Dr. O. W., 134, 135 

Home Rule, for Ireland, 117 

Homer, 243, 271 

Hotchkiss, in " Getting Mar- 
ried," 141 

" How He Lied to Her Hus- 
band," 74-76, 82, 88, 262, 
268 

Hudson Theatre, N. Y., 108 

Huxley, 19, 216 

Hyde Park, 20, 32, 119 

Hypatia, in " Misalliance," 
158, 160 

Ibsen, Shaw compared with, 
32, 42, 50, 53, 5Q, 62, 149, 
181, 190, 196, 250, 254, 
259, 261, 265, 272-274, 279, 
293 

Imperial Theatre, 106 

Independent Theatre, 39, 46, 
49, 58, 66 

India, 158 

"Interlude at The Play- 
house, The," 139-40 

Ireland, Shaw ancestor in, 
16, 187 

Irish Literary Theatre, The, 
114 

Irish Players, The, 147, 150, 
263 

Irish question, in "John 



INDEX 



301 



Bull's Other Island," 115- 
116 

"Irrational Knot, The," 24- 
Irving, Henry, 83 

James, William, 57 

Jesus, Doctrines of, 168, 169 

Job, 292 

"John Bull's Other Island," 
114-120, 131, 208 

Johnny, in " Misalliance," 
158 

Joyne, J. L., 20 

Judith, in " The Devil's Dis- 
ciple," 94 

Julia, in " The Philanderer," 
47 

Juno, Mrs., in "Overruled," 
175 

"Justice," Galsworthy's, 54 

Keegan, Father, in " John 

Bull's Other Island," 116- 

118, 208 
Kennedy, 263 
Kingsley, Charles, 73 
Kingston, Gertrude, 101 
Kingston Theatre, 114 
Kings way. The, 163 
Kitchener, Lord, 155, 156 
Knox, Mrs., in " Fanny's 

First Play," 166 
Konigliches Schauspielhaus, 

66 

Lady Cicely, in " Capt. 

Brassbound's Conversion," 

102-105, 127, 252, 280 
Ladv Corinthia, in " Press 

Cuttings," 154 
"Lady Windermere's Fan," 

37 
Lamarck, 217 
Land Reform Union, 20 
Larry, in "John Bull's 

Other Island," 115, 116 



Lavinia, 170 

Leo, in " Getting Married," 
141 

Lessing Theater, 176 

"Letter to Father Damien," 
118 

Liberty, 171 

Lickcheese, 42 

"Little Eyolf," 62 

Little Theatre, 163, 186 

Lomax, in "Major Bar- 
bara," 122 

London, Shaw's struggles in, 
4, 17 et seq.; 49, 66, 67, 
82, 89, 93, 134 

London School Board, 29 

London Stage Society, The, 
76, 100, 106, 108 

Lord Chamberlain, censor- 
ship of, 147 

Lord Summerhays, in " Mis- 
alliance," 158 

Louis, in " The Doctor's Di- 
lemma," 131-133 

Louka, in " Arms and the 
Man," 61, 64 

Love, Shavian philosophy 
anent, 44, 158, 226-229, 
287-288 

Luther, Martin, 292 

McCabe, Shavian biographer, 

15, 16, 20, 23 
McCarthy, Lillah, 165, 167 
Macaroni Committee and 

Company, in " The Music 

Cure," 186 
Mackaye's "Mater," 103 
"Madras House," 246 
"Magic," 186 
"Major Barbara," 120-128, 

131 197 
Mallock, W. H., 211 
"Mnn and Superman," 9, 45, 

108-114, 126, 156, 186, 252, 

262, 288 
Manchester, 154 



302 



INDEX 



"Man of Destiny, The," 74, 
77, 82-89, 118, 262 

Mansfield, Richard, 58, 67, 
83, 89 

Marchbanks, in "Candida," 
68-72, 230, 289 

Marconi scandal, 185 

Margaret, in " Fanny's First 
Play," 165, 166, 167, 223 

Mark Twain, 185 

Marriage, 46 ; in " Getting 
Married," 141-146 ; in 
"Misalliance," 158; in 
"Overruled," 173-176; 245 

Martyr type, 169, 172 

Marx, 22, 192 

"Mater," 103 

"Maternity," 12, 94 

Maude, Cyril, 76, 77, 83, 119, 
139 

Megaera, in " Androcles and 
the Lion," 171 

Meredith, George, and inter- 
viewers, 31 

Michael Angelo, 232 

Middleton, 263 

Milton, John, 153, 292 

"Misalliance," 157-160, 196 

Mitchener, in " Press Cut- 
tings," 156 

"Moliere of the Twentieth 
Century, The," 3^^- 

Moliere, the Don Juan of, 
111; and the professions, 
178; Shaw compared with, 
279, 289, 293 

Moody, American evangelist, 
18 

Morell, Rev. James, in 
" Candida," 72, 73, 230, 231 

Morocco, 101 

Morris, William, 31, 206 

Mozart, 111, 261 

"Music Cure, The," 185-187 

Napoleon, as delineated by 
Shaw, 85, 86, 280, 281 



Neues Theater, 82 

New Amsterdam Theatre, 

N Y., 95 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 95 
New England, in " The 

Devil's Disciple," 89 
New Haven, 49 
New Lyric Club, 49 
New Woman, The, 78 
New York City, Shaw plays 

in, 3, 46, 49, 66, 67, 101, 

176 
Nicola, in " Arms and the 

Man," 61 
Nietzsche, 93, 125, 215, 217, 

222, 293 
Nora, in " A Doll's House," 

197, 250 
Nora, in " John Bull's Other 

Island," 115, 116 

"Oedipus the King," 56 
" O'Flaherty, V. C," 8, 187 
Olivier, Sidney, 20 
Overman, Attaining, 216, 

218, 233 
"Overruled," 173-176 

Palmer, John, 9 

"Paradise Lost," 292 

Park Theatre, 177 

Parliament, and Shaw, 24 

" Passion, Poison, and Petri- 
faction," 119, 184 

Patiomkin, in " Great Cath- 
erine," 184 

Patsv, in "John Bull's 
Other Island," 116 

Payne-Townshend, Miss 

Charlotte Frances, Shaw 
marries, 29 

Percival, in " Misalliance," 
160 

PetkofF, in "Arms and the 
Man," 61 

" Philanderer, The," ana- 
lyzed, 45-49, 58, 174 



INDEX 



303 



Philistines satirized, 164, 
249 

Pickering, in "Pygmalion," 
183 

Pinero, Sir Arthur, 54, 173 

Plancus, 281 

Plato, 206 

Play, the one-act, Shaw a 
pioneer in, 263 

Playhouse, The, of New 
York, 120; in London, 139 

Playhouse, value and signifi- 
cance, 161 

Play-writing, 162, 238 ; Greek 
method, 264 

Positivist, Shaw a, 207; re- 
ligion, 208 

Praed, in " Mrs. Warren's 
Profession," 50, 54 

" Preface for Politicians, 
A," 117, 118 

"Press Cuttings," 153-157, 
185, 262 

Princess of Wales Theatre, 
The, 89 
f Princess Theatre, N. Y., QQ, 
263 

Prossy, in " Candida," 68, 
71, 72 

Prostitution, 55 

Public Opinion, Shaw's let- 
ter in, 18 

Puritans, Shaw's plays for, 
89-91 

"Pygmalion," 176-183, 262 

Rabelais, 11 

Raina, in "Arms and the 
Man," 59, 60, 61, 63, 64 

Ramsden, in " Man and 
Superman," 112 

Rankin, in " Capt. Brass- 
bound's Conversion," 104 

" Red Badge of Courage, 
The," 64 

Reginald, in "Getting Mar- 
ried," 141 



Religion, in " Blanco Pos- 
net," 150; in " Androcles 
and the Lion," 168 ; Shaw's, 
205-209, 216-223 

Rembrandt, 232 

Revolution, The American, 
89 

Revolutionist, defined, 191 

" Revolutionist's Handbook, 
The," 111, 190 

Richte, 11 

Ridgeon, Dr., in "The Doc- 
tor's Dilemma," 133 

Romance, Shavian philoso- 
phy anent, 110 

Roman civilization, 169, 170 

Rome, 228 

Royal Court Theatre, The, 
153 

Ruskin, 7, 31 

Russia, Shaw's vogue in, 3 

St. James Theatre, 168 
Salt, Henry, 20, 29, 216 
Salvation Army, in "Major 

Barbara," 121, 122, 124; 

in "Fanny's First Play," 

165 
Sankey, American evange- 
list, 18 
Sarah, in " Major Barbara," 

122 
Saturday Review, 25 
Saul of Tarsus, 151 
Savoy Theatre, 95 
Scandinavia, Shaw's vogue 

in, 3 
"School for Scandal, The," 

284 
Schopenhauer, 222 
Scribe, 253 
" Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 

The," 54 
Sergius, in "Arms and the 

Man,'* 59, 60, 61, 63, 

64 
Sex problems, 50, 51, 55^ 68, 



304 



INDEX 



75, 88, 90, 174, 200-203, 
286-288 

Shakspere, compared with 
Shaw, 3, 27, 56, 72, 83, 90, 
271, 272, 274, 279, 292; 
Shaw's criticism of, 125, 
160, 161, 204 

Shakspere National Memo- 
rial Theatre, 161 

Shavion principle, 44; in 
"Misalliance," 158; in 
" Man and Superman," 223 

Shelley, 29, 70, 267 

"She Stoops to Conquer," 284 

" Showing-up of Blanco 
Posnet, The," 147-153, 
219, 252, 261, 277 

Shvlock, 72 

Siberia, Monk of, 165 

Silver, in " Treasure Island," 
104 

Soames, in " Getting Mar- 
ried," 141 

Social teachings of Shaw, 189 
et seq. 

Socialism, Shaw and, 22, 153, 
191 et seq. 

Spain, 228 

Spencer, 19, 217 

Sphinx, The, 227-228 

Spintho, 170 

Stage Society, The,^147 

Stein, Gertrude, 8 

Stevenson, 104, 118, 151, 191, 
267 

Stockholm, 263 

Straker, in " Man and Super- 
man," 112 

Strand Theatre, The, 77, 100 

Strauss, Oscar, 65 

Strindberg, 263 

Sudermann, 263 

Swedenborg, 225 

Swinburne, 267 

Tanner, John, in " Man and 
Superman," 78, 81, 109, 



110, 112, 113, 186, 260, 280, 
288 

Tarleton, John, in "Misal- 
liance," 158 

Tchekov, 246 

Technic of play-writing, 238 

Tennyson, 267 

Terry, Ellen, 82, 83, 100, 101 

Teufelskerl, 89 

Theatre Royal, 95 

Theatre Royal du Pare, 67 

Theatre, the, Shavian defini- 
tion of, 11; Shaw's deflec- 
tion to, 25-28; his crafts- 
manship, 238 

Thessaly, 228 

Times, the London, 211 

"Toddles," 140 

Tolstoy, 163, 258, 291 

Tommy, in " Androcles and 
the Lion," 171 

Trebitsch, Siegfried, 167, 176 

Tree, Sir Herbert, 83, 176 

Trench, in " Widowers' 
Houses," 40, 41 

Twain, Mark, 11 

Undershaft, in " Major Bar- 
bara," 121, 123, 124, 125, 
126 

United States Commissioner 
of Immigration, on public 
ownership, 199 

" Unsocial Socialist, The," 
24 

Vaccination, Shaw scorns, 
136, 214, 217 

Valentine, in " You Never 
Can Tell," 78, 80, 81 

Vegetarianism, Shaw adopts, 
20; in "The Doctor's Di- 
lemma," 136; in "The 
Music Cure," 186, 216 

Velasquez, 232 

Victoria, Queen, 85 

Vienna, 120 



INDEX 



305 



Violet, in " Man and Super- 
man," 110, 113 

Vivie, in " Mrs. Warren's 
Profession," 50, 51, 54, 
257, 280, 288 

Vivisection, Shaw satirizes, 
46, 136 

Wagner, 25, 240 

Walkley, A. B., 98, 139, 164, 
292 

Wallace, 217 

Wallack's Theatre, N. Y., 
129, 168 

Wallas, Graham, 29 

War, satirized in " Arms and 
the Man," 59, 64; in 
" Caesar and Cleopatra," 
99, 100; in "Major Bar- 
bara," 121 ; in " Press Cut- 
tings," 155 

War, the European, Shaw's 
diatribe on, 8-10 

Warren, Mrs., in "Mrs. 
Warren's Profession," 51, 
52, 53, 54, 280, 288 

" Warren's Profession, Mrs,," 
9; analyzed, 49-57, 58, 109, 
153, 186, 245, 252, 257, 268, 
277 

Washington, George, 282, 283 

Washington Square Players, 
263 

Webb, Sidney, 20, 192 



Wells, H. G., 9, 190 

" What Every Woman 

Knows," 73, 103 
"When We Dead Awaken," 

Ibsen's, 32, 181 
W^histler, 8 
Whitehall, 162 
Whitman, Walt, 240 
"Widowers' Houses," 26; 

analyzed, 39-45 
" Wild Duck, The," 45 
Wilde, Oscar, 37 
William in " You Never Can 

Tell," 41, 78, 80, 155, 280 
" Woman of No Importance, 

A," 37 
Woman's social saga, 54 
Woman suffrage, Shaw and, 

146, 154, 156, 157, 196 
Wordsworth, on woman, 127, 

240 
W5aidham, Sir Charles, on 

"Candida," 67 

" You Made Me Love You," 

etc., 186 
"You Never Can Tell," 41, 

76-82, 91, 155, 260, 262, 

267, 286 



Zangwill, 263 

Zeletical Society, Shaw joins, 
19 



3i^77-l<- 



